Characters / James Bond (The Character)

Main Character Index

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Commander James Bond, Agent 007

The Eon Productions film series Bond actors. L - R, top to bottom: Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig.

The secret agent.

The son of Scotsman Andrew Bond and Swisswoman Monique Delacroix Bond, James Bond is, to put it simply, the best agent in the British Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI-6, and a Royal Navy Reserve Commander. The "double-O" prefix indicates his discretionary licence to kill in the performance of his duties. He's also an incurable womanizer.

Each actor played his own distinctive version of the character, often differing from the book character as written by Ian Fleming, but still coming back to him at times. An overall discussion of the whole character of James Bond is a subject that has entire books dedicated to it.

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The Character in General

• The Ace: Simply, the best secret agent of the MI-6 in the novels and films.
• Ace Pilot: While overshadowed by his other skills, Bond has flown a variety of fixed and rotary wing aircraft over the years, most notably "Little Nellie", an autogyro armed to the teeth as an attack craft.
• Action Hero: He is perhaps the Cultured Badass of cinema and one of the biggest in literature.
• Adaptational Heroism: All the screen James Bonds are much Lighter and Softer than the character of the original James Bond stories. Even the more embarrassing early Bond films are more heroic than their literary inspiration, who can be summed up as a troubled, grim assassin than the suave, charming superspy in the films. Throughout Fleming's books, Bond also expresses sexist, racist, and homophobic attitudes, something that Bond in the movies rarely does.
• The Alcoholic: Bond's love for booze can sometimes go into this territory, particularly in more serious portrayals.
• Anti-Hero: A Type III. Bond does have moral values, but given the job requires being ruthless and the licence to kill lets him go uh, scot-free...
• Badass Driver: One of cinema and literature's best and most iconic.
• Badass in Distress: He's captured and bound or held at gunpoint at least once every movie or book, but always manages to keep his cool and find a way out.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: His suits in the early films were made by some of the world's finest tailors, including Anthony Sinclair, Dimi Major, Cyril Castle, and Doug Hayward. He's been dressed by luxury fashion labels since the '90s - Brosnan was dressed by Brioni, Craig has largely been dressed by Tom Ford.
• Badass Longcoat: Every Bond has worn at least one in cold weather, and they add to his presence.
• Baritone of Strength: A trait shared by every actor to have played James Bond so far, Dalton's being arguably the deepest.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Bond is charming and debonair but he's still a trained killer and can be truly terrifying when provoked.
• Billionaire Wristband: Bond generally wears a high-class diver's watch as a nod to his background as a naval intelligence officer. Rolex Submariners were common in the early films, while more recent ones generally show him wearing various models of Omega Seamaster.
• Bond One-Liner: Well, yeah. He's the Trope Namer after all. Being a Deadpan Snarker, he uses humour as a shield and a weapon. He is skilled at making cutting remarks that reveal the insecurities of others or mock death, danger, and risk so he can intimidate people who are a threat to him.
• Born Lucky: How else can you describe a man who has only been shot twice in the entire film canon.
• Broken Ace: He's absurdly competent at almost everything he does, is revered as among the best of MI6's agents and is exceptionally charming, witty, physically capable and intelligent to boot. But it's been shown a few times that the stress of his work and the burden of having lost friends and killed people has taken a much greater toll on Bond than he'd like to admit and it's implied his love of alcohol, women and gambling are his ways of coping.
• Captain Patriotic: His motivation is always serving England first. Though, funnily enough, only two Bond actors (Roger Moore and Daniel Craig) were born in England.
• Cartwright Curse: His womanizing nature is perhaps his biggest weakness. His life is full of beautiful willing girls who initially don't want relationships, yet he manages to seduce them hook, line and sinker. And when they do, it ends badly for him, especially with Vesper Lynd and his wife Tracy. Many of the villains in the franchise have lampshaded and even used it against him.
• The Casanova: His biggest trait — and Fatal Flaw — is that he manages to seduce girls left, right and centre even if they don't want a relationship initially. He's lost many women, particularly Vesper Lynd and his wife Tracy Bond, over the course of his career, and many villains have lampshaded and even exploited this weakness of his.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • Mr. Bond always takes his martinis "Shaken, not stirred."
  • Whenever he's asked for his name, he always replies with "Bond. James Bond."
• The Charmer: Applies to Dalton's, Brosnan's and Craig's Bonds, who generally treat women with a bit more respect in comparison to the previous versions of the character.
• Chick Magnet: The ladies just can't resist him.
• Code Name: 007. "00" means he has a licence to kill. In the novel You Only Live Twice, Bond is promoted to 7777, supposedly meant to be a special level of agent above a double-0. It doesn't stick and he's back to 007 by the next book.
• Combat Pragmatist: Each Bond will make use of whatever they can to get the upper hand in a fight, especially against a Big Bad, where he'll use the most karmic weapon he can get his mitts on.
• Cool Car: They all have their trademark wheels. See the actors' respective pages for more of them.
• Cultured Badass: From a rich family and educated in some very elite private schools, yet also able to save the world, burn entire criminal organisations to the ground, face entire private armies armed with only a handgun and deliver constant one-liners on a regular basis.
• Cunning People Play Poker: Every incarnation of James Bond, who could be the Trope Codifier, has him at one point playing poker against either the Big Bad and/or their Number Two. His cunning nature and other skills always guarantee that he wins.
• Deadpan Snarker: Always has a quip ready for any situation. He's often been known to use humour as a shield and a weapon by accurately pinpointing and exploiting his enemies' flaws and subtly insult his captors when they invite him to dinner.
• Destructive Saviour: All the versions of the character had a tendency to destroy public property while on their missions.
• Encyclopaedic Knowledge: Bond is knowledgeable on many subjects.
• Everyone Has Standards: James Bond has many flaws as a human being and as a hero, but he also has his code of honour.
  • As much as a womanizer Bond is throughout the series, he won't go after anyone who's underage like Bibi in For Your Eyes Only, even if said girl is trying to chase him.
  • Bond is a Pragmatic Hero, but he will never risk the lives of innocent civilians, even if for the benefit of his mission.
  • Bond kills only people he considers serious and professional threats. In The Living Daylights, he spares Kara's life when he realizes that she has no idea how to hold a gun.
  • Bond is incorruptible. He will never take bribes and has no interest in making money at work or outside of it.
• Fatal Flaw: Bond has two big weaknesses.
  • His womanizing nature. His life is full of beautiful girls who initially don't want relationships. But when they do, it usually ends badly for him. Many of the villains in the franchise have even used it against him.
    • Most notably with Vesper Lynd and Countess Teresa di Vincenzo in the novels. It was also a recurring theme in the Brosnan and Craig eras, as Janus' statement regarding this left him quite rattled.
    • Also cleverly lampshaded by all of the Big Bads in the Brosnan era.
      Alec Trevelyan: I might as well ask if all those vodka martinis silenced the screams of all the men you've killed... or if you find solace in the arms of those willing women, for all the dead ones you failed to protect.
      Elliot Carver: And it seems you can't resist any woman in my possession.
      Elektra King: You should have killed me when you had the chance. But you couldn't. Not me. Not a woman you've loved.
      Gustav Graves: You see, I have a gift. An instinct for sensing people's weaknesses. Yours is women.
  • Alcoholism. More so in the novels, as he's constantly guzzling down booze, and sometimes likes to mix it with coffee or water. A tragic example comes in You Only Live Twice, where 007 goes completely off the rails after Tracy's death, slowly losing his grip on sanity and getting multiple hangovers on a daily basis. He even flat-out admits to having a serious drinking problem in Spectre.
• Flaw Exploitation: Many of the Bond villains have remarked upon and exploited 007's Fatal Flaw for women against him to varying degrees of success.
  • In turn, he always has a quip ready for any situation. He's often been known to use humour as a shield and a weapon by accurately pinpointing and exploiting his enemies' flaws and subtly insult his captors when they invite him to dinner.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity. Whenever villains give a Motive Rant about their Evil Plan and how they plan to off Bond, it quickly becomes clear to him that they're just talking about their insanity and selfishness via Psychological Projection. They're determined to justify themselves and their crimes to 007 while ranting about his own flaws, only for Bond to subtly insult them while cooking up a plan B to defeat the baddies.
• Functional Addict: Bond has issues with drinking, gambling and sex but they never interfere with his work or impede his competence.
• The Gambler: Bond is often seen in casinos. Generally, Bond's card game of choice is Baccarat, but in Casino Royale, the game of choice is Texas Hold 'Em.
• Genius Bruiser: Took a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge. Throughout the movies, he speaks or understands French, German, Italian, Japanese, Danish, Russian and several others. He demonstrates an excellent knowledge of multiples sciences, usually as good or better than the Evil Genius villains he is up against, everything from physics to chemistry to marine biology amongst others, as well as mathematics. He can drive or pilot almost any vehicle (and can usually identify the make and model of cars on sight, right down to noticing phony licence plates). He has an excellent knowledge of history and of course international politics. He is a wine and food connoisseur as well as a decent cook in his own right. He was a Naval commander in his previous profession, and his current career requires the combined skills of a world-class assassin/spy/thief/detective/escape artist, etc. Basically, it's more a question of what Bond can't do.
• Good Is Not Soft: He will beat, blackmail, shoot or betray anyone if it helps his mission any further. He sometimes feels uncomfortable killing in cold blood, especially in the books... but he will still do it, if there is no other option.
• Grandfather Clause: Bond himself would make an incredibly terrible spy today; his heavy drinking and womanizing would get him bounced in an instant. However, when he was introduced in 1952, British spies were notoriously heavy partiers. Ian Fleming himself based Bond's actions on himself and people he'd worked with. The only reason why Bond's eccentricity remains is it is such a large part of the draw of the character.
• The Hedonist: He drinks and gambles a lot, and has prioritized sex over his mission on many occasions.
• The Hero: One of cinema's top 3, according to the American Film Institute.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • Being a Professional Killer who considers murder as part of his job, Bond sometimes questions the morality of what he does and knows the danger of becoming just as evil as his enemies. But despite this, he refuses to let that shake his incredible loyalty to queen and country. Rogue Agents such as Alec Trevelyan and Raoul Silva are prime examples of what 007 could potentially become should he start crossing moral boundaries.
  • It actually does happen to 007 in Licence to Kill, where Big Bad Franz Sanchez brutally attacks Bond's old friend Felix on his wedding night and kills Leiter's wife, forcing Bond to start a personal vendetta against Sanchez that requires him to become a Rogue Agent in the process. This also earns him a What the Hell, Hero? speech from M.
  • He briefly goes rogue in Quantum of Solace, but this is ultimately subverted at the end, much to M's surprise.
  • Averted at the end of Spectre. Following the Final Battle, as Blofeld is at 007's mercy, he offers Bond a chance to Finish Him!, but Bond refuses, bluntly stating that he's "out of bullets". This means that despite being a Professional Killer, there are moral lines that even Bond won't cross, and killing Blofeld in revenge won't do or help much. This also left Blofeld perplexed at Bond's rationale to spare him, despite their Cain and Abel relationship.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Each of the Bonds is a crack marksman: The Literary Bond lands a headshot on a speeding car with his PPK and is the second-best shot in MI6, Connery's Bond claims to have never missed with his Beretta when he's forced to change weapons in Dr. No, and in Thunderball he manages to shoot a clay pigeon without even looking at it and takes out Vargas with a Harpoon Gun with a Quick Draw. Moore's Bond kills a sniper with a shotgun. Dalton's Bond fake-assassinates General Pushkin, who notes Bond's aiming skill. Brosnan's Bond claims he never misses as a Bond One-Liner (though he is responding to a reference to missing someone emotionally after their death, he says it whilst shooting them). Part of Craig's Bond's character arc in Skyfall is regaining his skills and he does with his father's rifle. Even Lazenby's Bond, who never manages to make a kill with his PPK onscreen, manages to show an impressive aim with a throwing knife and a calendar.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He is cold, misogynistic, brutal, and snarky. However, he has saved the world more than once, demonstrates a strong sense of justice, generally tries to avoid civilian casualties, and is very protective of his friends or lovers.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Though 007 may be a jerk at times, he often uses Bond One-Liners and cutting remarks on a villain's insanity, pointing out their flaws.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Quite possibly the bext example in all of pop culture. Bond has a taste for the finer things in life such as glamorous restaurants and casinos, nice suits, expensive wine and champagne, and trips to exotic locations.
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • Connery became one of the biggest sex symbols of the 1960s. If he's not strutting around in beautifully tailored suits, he's shirtless and showing off his Carpet of Virility.
  • Lazenby was a successful model before being Bond, and he looks good.
  • Moore's and Dalton's films have a lot of close-ups emphasising their beautiful eyes and deep, smooth voices.
  • Brosnan has at least two Shirtless Scenes per movie, which is not surprising because Brosnan was a very popular sex symbol during The '90s (and it even stretches back to his Remington Steele days in The '80s).
  • Craig has a surprising amount of Shirtless Scenes and his Sexy Surfacing Shot in Casino Royale is one of his most iconic scenes. Also lampshaded in Casino Royale by Vesper.
    Vesper: I'll be keeping my eyes on the money, and off your perfectly formed arse.
    Bond: You noticed.
    Vesper: Even accountants have imaginations.
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond: The Trope Namer, of course. He introduces himself in this manner in virtually every movie.
• Nerves of Steel: Bond always keeps his cool, no matter the situation.
• Officer and a Gentleman: Has the grade of Commander. You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Tomorrow Never Dies all have a scene featuring him in his Royal Navy uniform.
• One-Man Army: His kill tallies are usually pretty high per film, especially during the Brosnan era. And he's managed to trash entire criminal empires like SPECTRE to the ground.
• Overt Operative:
  • Bond is not exactly subtle about his methods of carrying out a mission in the films, due to Rule of Cool.
  • Largely averted by the novels, where Bond is pretty subtle and stealthy most of the time, and never really does anything too over the top in public.
• Parental Abandonment: Bond lost his parents in a mountaineering accident in the French Alps when he was around 11 years old. It's unknown what happened to his aunt Charmain - it's presumed that she died sometime before 007 turned 18, but he mentions her in the present tense in The Man with the Golden Gun.
• Phrase Catcher: "Oh, James!" is generally said by any woman about to sleep with him.
• The Pornomancer: Many women who revile him at first end up in his bed, at times with no rational explanation why. However, Bond girls are a tradition.
• Professional Killer: He is an assassin employed by the British government.
• Protagonist Title: Played with. The entire franchise is named after him, but none of the books or films are.
• Public Domain Character: Only in Canada. The literary 007 is public domain there due to 50 years passing since Fleming's death (most nations have it as 70 or 75 years). As a result, there has already been a collection of James Bond short stories by a number of notable authors that is legally only available in that country. The book's title, of course, is Licence Expired.
• Punch-Packing Pistol: His PPK, despite being a compact pistol chambered in a relatively small calibre (.32ACP or .380ACP depending on the actor), is often used to take out scores of Mooks often armed with automatic weapons. In Spectre, Craig!Bond manages to down a helicopter with it.
• Pungeon Master: He's delivered more than his fair share of punny Bond One Liners over the course of his career.
• Really Gets Around: The list of women he seduced and bedded is pretty staggering.
• Renaissance Man: Cultured in an unknown number of languages, science, biology, vehicles, weaponry, and numerous other things that pop up when the plot needs them. It's arguable that Bond is one of the most accomplished, well-learned and efficient men on the face of the Earth. Which is kind of necessary given the fights, infiltrations and general spywork he has to commit to on a global scale. This tends to attract quite a few women, and often the respect of his enemy of the story.
• Sex God: Not only he beds several women he's also usually portrayed as being a very talented lover.
• Sociopathic Hero: Especially in the Fleming novels and the earlier and recent movies. Bond is intelligent, charismatic, and manipulative, with his courtship of women ranging from romantic at best to potential rape at worst (in Goldfinger, Bond's sexual encounter with Pussy Galore begins with him throwing her into a hay bale then getting on top of her and kissing her despite her saying "no" several times). Him quickly getting over his latest love interests between movies despite being stated to have loved them seems indicative of a Lack of Empathy and need for stimulation; all together this makes for many of the traits that define a sociopath. Subverted in that he is indeed capable of compassion, something a true sociopath would never be able to do (unless he's good at faking compassion). Note that, in the novels, Bond isn't as dismissive of his female friends, with novels often including callbacks to preceding Bond girls; and then, of course, there's Tracy...
• Stepford Snarker: Bond always has a dry quip handy but it's heavily implied to be a cover for his struggles with the strain of his work.
• The Stoic: Bond makes a point of keeping his emotions hidden and staying cool in any situation.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: The only one who is blond and under six feet (183cm) tall is Daniel Craig, and he makes up for it in Heroic Build.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Other than Daniel Craig, every version of Bond is six feet or over with dark hair and all have a very sharp wit.
• Trademark Favourite Drink:
  • He really loves his vodka martinis — shaken, not stirred. Daniel Craig's Bond's favourite drink, the Vesper cocktail, comes right from the Casino Royale novel.
  • His second favourite drink is champagne, with his brand of choice going from Dom Perignon to Bollinger.
• Tuxedo and Martini: He's the Trope Maker, Trope Namer and Trope Codifier. Although pop culture tends to exaggerate this one, as he normally opts for a regular suit or suitable clothing in woodland/tropical environments, unless he's infiltrating a formal occasion. The only films Bond doesn't wear a tuxedo in are You Only Live Twice and Live and Let Die.
• Villain Killer: A typical Bond story follows the same pattern, with an evil mastermind's mooks being killed first, followed by The Dragon, and then the Big Bad. It started with Dr. No and ran through The Man with the Golden Gun. The baddies usually aim to sell the Communist Chinese a nifty superweapon or trigger a war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Bond wisely makes sure these nasty nihilists do no more evil, ever.
• Waistcoat of Style: Every Bond has worn at least two.
• Weapon Specialization: The legendary Walther PPK, normally equipped with a suppressor. Different Bonds had a preference for different calibres; Connery, Dalton and Brosnan carried it in .32 ACP, while Moore, Lazenby and Craig opted for the .380 ACP version. In Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, both Roger Moore and Sean Connery carried the 9x19mm Walther P5. Later in Tomorrow Never Dies, Brosnan's Bond gets a brand new 9x19mm Walther P99 which is used up until Casino Royale. Then in Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre, the PPK returns due to "artistic reasons". In real life, the weapon had been retired from active use since one reportedly failed during an attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne in 1974; as such, by the time of GoldenEye, Bond is identified by his weapon in part because he's one of the only agents still using a PPK.
• Would Hit a Girl: It's rare, but once in while he will be violent towards a woman even if she wasn't the one who attacks first.
• You Are Number 6: He is referred to as 007 by M and Q.

Literary

Commander James Bond, CMG, RNVR

"Goldfinger's dead. If anyone makes a move or disobeys an order I shall kill him."

Voiced by: Michael Jayston (You Only Live Twice, BBC Radio 4, 1990), Toby Stephens (BBC Radio 4 Dramas since 2008)

"But you're different, right? Saving the world three times before lunch..."

— Pussy Galore, Trigger Mortis

First appearing in Casino Royale, Fleming's Bond is very different to what modern readers who have seen the movies would expect. Compared to the suave superspy of the films, he is a ruthless, cold Professional Killer first and foremost, more willing to be violent and does not always have the best attitudes to race or women. Yet, he eventually grows more and more heroic as the books go on, especially with the later writers.

Fleming's Bond is notable for his distinct physical appearance, with black hair, blue eyes, a three-inch scar on his right cheek and a comma of hair that is always present.

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• Action Hero: One of the biggest in literature. He burns entire criminal organizations to the ground, made SPECTRE and SMERSH crap their pants, takes on entire private armies by himself, fights a giant squid and wins, is one of the scariest hitmen in fictional history, will win every single card game even when drunk and drugged, gives crime lords spectacular deaths and is strong enough to stab a whole plane window hard enough to shatter. By the time of From Russia with Love, he's considered to be one of the most dangerous threats to SMERSH and a hero to everyone in MI6.
• The Alcoholic: Holy nutballs. He's constantly seen drinking an alcoholic beverage in every appearance, and likes to mix coffee or water with alcohol. By the end of Fleming's run, he's consumed over 1150 alcohol units◊, including martinis, beer, whisky, bourbon, cocktails, gin and champagne. A tragic example comes in You Only Live Twice, where Bond goes completely off the rails after Tracy's death, drunkenly wandering about London, thinking irrationally and getting multiple hangovers on a daily basis.
• Anti-Hero: At least in Casino Royale. As the series progresses and becomes more like the films with the subsequent continuation authors, Bond becomes more of the traditional heroic character.
• Author Avatar: Of Ian Fleming, who was a Royal Naval Intelligence Division officer during World War II. This is referenced in the miniseries Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond, which details Fleming's military career, by Ann O'Neill (Lara Pulver):
  Ann O'Neill: Is that why he has your golf handicap and your taste in vodka?
• Badass Bookworm: His job requires him to read through files of any topic that might be of use in or is related to his mission. As a result, he's already quite knowledgeable on a very wide range of subjects, from firearms to heraldry, and is constantly learning new information over each book.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He's often seen in a dark blue tropical suit◊, which he wears a black knitted tie with, or a tuxedo.
• Bad Liar: As good as an assassin he is, his cover stories are pretty terrible and often get demolished very quickly. Even in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where he has to go undercover for extended periods of time, he struggles in keeping the facade of an upper-class baronet and in one unlucky moment blows it right in front of Blofeld.
• Blessed with Suck: Bond's feelings on being a 00— it's a high tension job filled with physical hardship.
• Brave Scot: He's half Scottish, as You Only Live Twice reveals, and his family had their roots in Scotland.
• Broken Pedestal: He suffers from this after Sir Hugo von Drax, a national hero and millionaire Bond admired and got along well with, confirms himself to be a psychopathic maniac by casually ramming a passing Alfa Romeo and killing its 19 year old driver while trying to evade Bond in a car chase, then revealing himself as an actual Nazi once he has Bond captured.
• The Brute: Although he is a good guy, he can be this at times. He's got a rather hot temper, is very well-built and is extremely good at unarmed or melee combat. He's also occasionally rude to most of his co-workers and enjoys irritating his secretary and M.
• Cool Car: Several. He famously owned a battleship-grey Bentley 4.5 litre with a supercharger. When it gets written off in Moonraker during a car chase, Bond switches to other vehicles. Probably the coolest of these was the Aston Martin DB Mark III in Goldfinger, which included switches to change the colours of head and rear lights, reinforced steel bumpers for ramming, a radio tracker for stalking Goldfinger's car and Bond's Colt M1911A1 in a trick compartment under the driver's seat.
• Cold Sniper: He remains silent while sniping and constantly focuses on trying to kill his targets. However, unlike other examples of the trope, Bond is uncomfortable with sniping missions due to his distaste for having to kill in cold blood.
• Consummate Professional: He tends to put his mission first and foremost over having sex with the Bond Girl, unless it's part of the mission itself. Particularly, in Dr. No, he successfully resists all temptation to bang Honey while she's cheerfully trying to seduce him.
• Cursed with Awesome: Bond's life of beautiful willing women who don't want relationships. And when they do, it ends badly.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: In Casino Royale, Bond is incredibly uptight and serious, with Vesper noting how he goes back to being cold as soon as he lets a hint of emotion show. Bond does begin to lighten up after spending time with Vesper, but after her death he starts to slip back into his old personality. Once Moonraker rolls around, though, Bond begins to be considerably more warm and emotional, even showing anger when Drax murders an innocent bystander during a car chase. Over the course of the series Bond opens up more and by On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he shows that he is just as capable as loving someone as any other person.
• Determinator: No matter how much pain he's in, no matter what faces him and no matter what happens to him, he'll keep on going until his mission is complete.
• Does Not Like Spam: Goldfinger reveals that, contrary to the stereotype about the English, he hates tea, saying it tastes like mud. He even goes so far as to blame it for the downfall of the British Empire. If he's having a non-alcoholic drink, it will be a black coffee instead.
• Early Instalment Weirdness: In his very first outing in the literary version of Casino Royale, Bond is selected for the mission not because of how badass he is - though he is clearly a skilled agent - but because he is the Service's best gambler; the objective is to bankrupt a Soviet agent at the baccarat table to force him to turn informant for Britain in exchange for protection from his irate masters.
• The Gambler: He's introduced as the Service's best gambler in Casino Royale, and he's an extremely talented one at that. Bond is interested in anything to do with cards, visits casinos several times and is terrifyingly good at card games-in Moonraker, he single-handedly sets up a trap for Drax to fall into by taking advantage of the current situation.
• Good Is Not Nice: Although he's a fairly likable person, Bond has no problems insulting or belittling his allies on missions and will often do so to their face.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: In the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, he is often described as having a scar down his right cheek. However, in the movies based on the books, this scar had mysteriously vanished. Also, one of the Russians, whose timely intervention against 'Le Chiffre' in the first Bond novel Casino Royale saved him from that villain, left him alive but marked him with the Cyrillic letter Ш (the first letter of the word Шпион, meaning 'spy') carved on the back of his right hand, which ended up leaving a permanent scar that the best efforts of plastic surgeons in the employ of MI-6 could not completely eradicate.
• Go-to Alias: In John Gardner's novels, Bond often uses the alias of 'James Boldman'.
• Handgun:
  • Fleming originally gave him a .25 Beretta 418, until advice from Major Boothroyd lead Bond to obtain his signature .32 PPK in Dr. No, although Bond initially took a .38 Centennial Airweight to Crab Key before losing it, later using a standard .38 S&W during the climax. Fleming also has him keep a 'long-barrelled .45 Colt' as a heavier sidearm. In "From a View to a Kill", the long-barrelled Colt is revealed to be an M1911A1, as Bond is nearly killed because he kept the safety catch on to avoid outright killing his enemies. During The Spy Who Loved Me, in addition to his PPK, he has a Police Positive as a backup weapon, which he gives to Vivienne.
  • When John Gardner took over, he equipped Bond with a FN 1903, thanks to the PPK being withdrawn from police service after the real-life kidnapping attempt on Princess Anne in 1974, as her bodyguard's PPK jammed when he tried to intervene. After criticism from fans for choosing a very old pistol, Gardner had Bond using a HK VP70 for the next novel, then a Heckler & Koch P7, until finally settling on the ASP. Bond also keeps a .44 Ruger Super Redhawk in place of the M1911A1.
  • Raymond Benson had Bond switching between his signature PPK and the Walther P99. Appropriately, the PPK was used for covert missions, while the P99 was used during missions that did not require concealment.
  • Anthony Horowitz briefly arms him with a Remington 1911 in Trigger Mortis, as a present from the FBI when Bond arrives in the US.
  • Jeffery Deaver gives him the Walther PPK's modern successor, the Walther PPS, chambered in .40 S&W in Carte Blanche.
• Hero's Classic Car: In the Fleming novels, he drives a Bentley 4 1/2 liter. The car is variously described as a 1930, 1933, 1935, and 1937 model^note the car had been described in the novels as "Bentley with Amherst Villiers supercharger", which a single model ever had: the Blower Bentley from 1927-1931. None were built after Rolls-Royce takeover in November 1931.
• Hidden Depths: At first glance, James Bond may seem to be your typical Sociopathic Hero and has often been mistakenly criticized as such. In fact, the books make it clear that Bond's apparent coldness is intentional compartmentalization to withstand the trauma of his job. He's highly uncomfortable with killing in cold blood, rather than in self-defence, and Goldfinger even opens up with him getting drunk and ruminating on the hitman he had just killed the previous day. The short story "The Living Daylights" requires Bond to kill a Soviet sharpshooter to protect another agent, and he snaps at his handler for trying to prevent him from drinking before the job. When not having to kill, he shows great compassion (especially for women who seem "damaged" in some way, almost like he's a hopeless romantic for people he can "fix") and has legitimate friends.
• Hitman with a Heart: At the core, Bond is just an assassin sponsored by his government. However, he never kills in cold blood (outside of assassinations), will try and protect anyone who gets caught up in his dangerous adventures and can be kind and caring to others. One of the most prominent examples of this trope is in Trigger Mortis, where Bond confronts a terrified, nineteen year old security guard responsible for burying him alive. Bond punches him in the throat, seemingly killing him, but in fact knocked him unconscious at the last minute, as the boy had a wife, ailing mother and six-month-old son back in Queens.
• Icy Blue Eyes: One of his most defining physical features, alongside the black comma of hair and the scar on his cheek.
• Immune to Drugs: According to the medical report in Thunderball, when Bond is not engaged in strenuous duty, he consumes half a bottle of spirits between 60 and 70 proof a day. And he smokes 60 cigarettes a day (of a higher nicotine content than standard cigarettes).
• In Harm's Way: Despite his increasing aversion to killing in cold blood and the many terrible injuries he often receives, Bond finds common office work boring, and assignments that put him in mortal danger exciting.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: After being basically a Jerkass on the side of the good guys on his first two appearances, he gets better in Moonraker, where he begins to develop into a hero and is willing to work with Gala Brand despite their differences, as well as wishing her luck with her actual fiancé at the end. Diamonds Are Forever has Bond acting gentlemanly to Tiffany Case, caring heavily about his friends and innocent people and saving a manicurist from getting fired. In Dr. No, he's arguably at his most heroic, being kind to Honey, wanting to stop Dr. No's plan at all costs, feeling sadness at the deaths of Strangways and his secretary and treating Quarrel and the other Jamaicans as equals. Throughout Thunderball, he's absolutely sweet with Domino and even begs to see her when injured and in hospital. And of course, there's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with him falling head over heels for Tracy. Even in Goldfinger, where he's considerably more cynical and rude, he's openly caring to the Masterton sisters (even giving Jill one thousand dollars for herself), admires Pussy Galore for being a female gangster and horrified at the damage caused by the nerve gas to the town around Fort Knox. Trigger Mortis, meanwhile, has him parting on good terms with Pussy Galore. He also willingly lets her go back to America with Logan Fairfax, a sharp contrast to the homophobic attitudes he held during the events of Goldfinger.
• Jerkass: Usually whenever he shows his misogynistic side in the Fleming novels. In Casino Royale, he's extremely misogynistic, briefly musing that women are only good for sex, is incredibly icy and goes into a huge internal Stay in the Kitchen rant during a car chase. Live and Let Die likewise has him being quite racist to black people, with a later book detailing how Leiter sharply rebuked Bond for being prejudiced. Goldfinger sees Bond expressing racist sentiments about Koreans and makes homophobic comments. He becomes more likeable from Moonraker onwards.
• Knight in Sour Armour: He's always willing to save the world and fight against the supervillains he faces, but he's cynical from the constant death and trauma he faces, as well as the darker sides of his work. This aspect is particularly strong in Goldfinger, where he broods on brutally killing a Mexican hitman, the amounts of deaths happening around the world every second and the value of human life in the beginning.
• Lean and Mean: Tall and thin, and definitely not a man to be messed with.
• Ladykiller in Love: Falls absolutely in love with both Vesper Lynd and Countess Teresa di Vincenzo. Sadly, both don't end well. Smaller examples of this are with Tiffany Case and Pussy Galore, both who he lived with for a few months. However, he broke up with both women eventually.
• Made of Iron: He tanks a lot of damage frequently. He's has his groin flogged with a carpet beater, burned, attacked by a giant squid, stomped on with football boots, electrocuted, poisoned, shot with his own Beretta, tortured and suffered various nasty falls throughout Fleming's run. Of course, he's soon back up and running for the next mission.
• McNinja: In You Only Live Twice, Bond receives training in ninjutsu before taking on Dr. Shatterhand, and is even given a full ninja uniform, Bo staff and Kusari-fundo to assist him in his mission.
• Must Have Caffeine: He takes two coffees at breakfast, black with no sugar. In From Russia with Love, he owns a Chemex Coffeemaker and in Live and Let Die, he cites Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee as the most delicious in the world.
• My Greatest Failure: Bond's distant relationship with his late son and only (known) child, James Suzuki. In the novel for You Only Live Twice, Kissy Suzuki doesn't reveal that she's pregnant, but over the course of 30 years, as revealed in the 1997 short story "Blast from the Past", Bond learns of James' existence and would occasionally send money to support them, and paid for James' college education, but he wasn't really present in his son's life. James Jr. is murdered by Bond's old enemy Irma Bunt, who also had a hand in killing his wife Tracy but escaped. When Bond finally kills her, for his own sake he focuses on cherishing the revenge rather than dwelling on how his life prevented him from being a father to his now-dead son. Bond's tragic marriage to Tracy is also implied to be one, as he collapses into drinking and rash behaviour by You Only Live Twice and feels sadness for her death in No Deals, Mr. Bond.
• One-Man Army: It's implied that part of his job is to be one. Often, he's sent out alone to take on entire criminal organisations or private armies and always manages to completely destroy them by the end of the book, though it's deconstructed in From a View to a Kill. Because he's so used to going up against a huge threat alone, Bond goes up against several heavily armed Russian operatives without any backup and nearly gets killed as a result.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: His attitudes towards women are invokedpretty eye-rolling by recent standards, and Goldfinger has him make some pretty disparaging remarks towards Koreans.
• Professional Killer: It's made very clear that despite becoming more of an international policeman as the books go on, he's still a government-sponsored hitman first and foremost.
• Properly Paranoid: The very first chapter of Casino Royale describes the litany of burglar-alarms he's rigged up in his hotel room, and how he doesn't feel the slightest bit silly for setting them. It's zigzagged in later books, some of which portray him as quite impulsive and shortsighted, resulting in him getting captured or hitting a snag in the mission.
• Real Men Take It Black: In contrast to most of his fellow Brits, he hates tea, and takes his coffee black. When at home, he (or rather, his housekeeper) makes it in a Chemex Coffeemaker. Justified Trope: he drinks a lot of coffee, and the last thing he'd want in the middle of a mission is to lose energy from a sugar crash.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Bond apparently watches a lot of Disney movies in his spare time, seeing how he was able to recognise various characters during his visits to Walt Disney World. As well as that, Bond enjoyed the park so much on his first visit that he turned his two day visit into a week long stay.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: His ones can go across several books. Casino Royale to From Russia with Love are basically him declaring bloody vengeance on SMERSH for the death of Vesper Lynd. He goes on a smaller one in You Only Live Twice to rain hell on Blofeld for murdering Tracy.
• Scars Are Forever:
  • Bond has a scar on the back of his left hand shaped like Ш, the cyrillic letter "s", for "spy".It is carved by a SMERSH assassin in Casino Royale, and despite skin grafts, the scar remains.
  • The three-inch scar on Bond's right cheek still remains decades later.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Although it's not very obvious, it's hinted that Bond is haunted by the more traumatic sides of his missions. Dr. No mentions that Bond has nightmares about the terrifying journey and agonizing torture he endured in Live and Let Die.
• Smoking Is Cool: Zig-zagged. Although Bond smokes a lot and regularly samples foreign tobacco during his missions, he's very aware of the toll it takes on his health. As a result, he cuts down on his cigarette consumption for serious missions, such as going from 60 to 10 a day in Live and Let Die and in Trigger Mortis, he understands that his constant nicotine consumption has seriously worn him out after running. Bond has tried to quit several times, but ends up going back to his old habits anyway.
• Sleeps in the Nude: Seems to have this habit, even when not sharing his bed with a woman. In Solo he's shown to sleeping in the buff and In Fleming's From Russia, with Love, he also appears to sleep naked in the chapter titled "The Soft Life".
• Sociopathic Hero: Originally, Bond was a prime example of this trope, being manipulative, cold and having no problems about forcibly seducing women when he felt like it. Bond eventually steps out of this role, becoming much less sociopathic and more likable. Some of the short stories in particular, such as "For Your Eyes Only" and "The Hildebrand Rarity" in For Your Eyes Only and "The Living Daylights" in Octopussy and The Living Daylights, reveal a Bond uncomfortable with targeted assassinations (as opposed to killing in defence of himself and others) and capable of considerable empathy. From Russia with Love also has him feeling discomfort when Kerim shoots a fleeing hitman in the back. And in Dr. No, when Bond is forced to gun down three guards to keep him and Honey safe, he feels very uncomfortable doing it, even though said men could have been the Three Blind Mice and were heading off to gang rape Honey.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: In Moonraker Bond worries that his work as a professional killer has somehow made him 'un-English', and that other Englishmen can immediately perceive this from his appearance and overall demeanour.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Goldfinger, he's considerably more cynical and prickly due to being weary of having to kill people. This is reflected to how he showers intense hatred on Koreans, demonstrates mild homophobia towards lesbians and borderline-assaults Pussy Galore near the end of the book.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Starting from Moonraker onwards, Bond became much more open and caring to his friends and allies, although he did remain a ruthless hitman. Although he did slip into jerkassery in Goldfinger, it's nowhere near as bad as how Bond originally was in Casino Royale and by For Your Eyes Only, Bond drops most of his cynicism.
• Trademark Favourite Food: He really, really, really loves scrambled eggs. He's infamously picky about them too, to the point where he actually has his own recipe as seen in Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Bond also enjoys pasta and mentions it as a weakness of his.
• Tragic Hero: Bond is meant to be one of these early on because he's certain he'll be dead before he's retired at 42.
• Would Hit a Girl: He really likes threatening to spank women when he's annoyed. However, he never gets around to doing so, thanks to his strong moral code and falling in love with them; it's believed to actually be an element of Fleming introducing his own interest in BDSM into his books. Interestingly, he has no problems threatening women, but when Quarrel interrogates Annabel Chung in Dr. No, Bond is worried that Quarrel might actually break her arm. The one time Bond actually ends up stuck with a domestic abuser in "The Hildebrand Rarity", he's disgusted and nearly comes to blows with him over it. When Krest is found murdered, Bond barely hesitates before throwing his body overboard and helping cover up the crime.

Sean Connery

Commander James Bond CMG

"That's a Smith & Wesson, and you've had your six."

Played by: Sean Connery ^{Other Languages}Latin American Spanish: Jorge Lavat (Dr. No and From Russia with Love), Mario Sauret (From Russia with Love redubbing), Agustín López Zavala (Goldfinger), Blas García (Thunderball and Diamonds Are Forever), David Povall (You Only Live Twice), Jorge Lapuente (Diamonds Are Forever redubbing) | European Spanish: Simón Ramírez, Arsenio Corsellas (Diamonds Are Forever) | Brazilian Portuguese: Márcio Seixas | Czech: Pavel Šrom | European French: Jean-Pierre Duclos | Japanese: Genzō Wakayama (all films in TV Asahi, TBS and 2006 DVD edition) Hidaka Takuro (From Russia with Love and Goldfinger TBS Version 1), Kenji Utsumi (Diamonds Are Forever TBS Version 2)

Appearances: Dr. No | From Russia with Love | Goldfinger | Thunderball | You Only Live Twice | Diamonds Are Forever

Sylvia Trench: I admire your luck, Mr.?

Bond: Bond. James Bond.

— Dr. No

The Manly Bond.

As the first cinematic Bond^note but not the first person to play him — that title goes to Barry Nelson in the 1954 Climax! series TV movie Casino Royale (1954) while the first person to play a British Bond was Bob Holness in a 1956 South African radio version of Moonraker, Sean Connery is very much considered the character's iconic codifier. Particularly notable for his distinctive accent and suave sophistication — in fact, it was due to Connery's portrayal that Bond was canonically established in the novels as half-Scottish. First to employ the Bond One-Liner, naturally.

Tropes specific to Connery's interpretation of Bond in the non-Eon Productions film Never Say Never Again can be found here.

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• Adaptational Heroism: Common to all James Bond, but as the first, Sean Connery set the trend of being much Lighter and Softer than the original Ian Fleming character. Namely his suave and cool persona, where the original tended to be The Brute at times and was more willing to open fire than Connery's Bond.
• Animal Motifs: Part of the reason Connery was cast was that the producers compared him to a jungle cat (Albert R. Broccoli noted that he "walks like a panther").
• Author Avatar: Sean Connery was a working-class Scot and was initially dismissed by Ian Fleming as an "overgrown stuntman". His on-screen persona was modelled a great deal on director Terence Young, who backed the actor and helped him build the suave persona that made Bond distinct.
• Baritone of Strength: Sean Connery gave the character a deep, warm voice that's hard to forget.
• Brave Scot: Ian Fleming approved of the portrayal so much that he actually made Bond's Scottish ancestry canon in the novels.
• Carpet of Virility: Lampshaded in You Only Live Twice where the Japanese women are curious about his chest rug, as Japanese men don't tend to have it.
• The Casanova: Every film has him at least flirting with multiple women. He even provides the trope image!
• Cool Car: The Aston Martin DB5, one of cinema's most iconic. Its features include bulletproof windscreens, rotating licence plates, mounted machine guns, and a nifty ejector seat for disposing of unwanted passengers.
• Disposable Woman: Connery's Bond loves 'em and leaves 'em, sometimes in a coffin.
• Double Entendre: Very fond of these, especially in Diamonds Are Forever.
• Drink-Based Characterization: In addition to volkda martini and champagne, he's shown to be a connoisseur of brandy and sherry, outsmarting M with his knowledge of both beverages. He also enjoys Rum Collins in the Bahamas sake while in Japan, especially at the correct temperature and neat whisky in Amsterdam. His knowledge of fine wines help him spot assassins in From Russia with Love and Diamonds are Forever. He is noticeably horrified at Siamese vodka in You Only Live Twice.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Connery's Bond isn't depicted as a know-it-all, showing ignorance about toppling, gold bullion and diamonds. The running gag of Bond possessing a seemingly endless repository of trivial information, and using this to show off in front of M, makes its debut in Goldfinger (though it isn't until the Moore era that this trait gets exaggerated).
  • Not only is Bond's trait of delivering Karmic Deaths to the Big Bad not yet in evidence, a lot of the time he isn't even the one who kills them. Blofeld escapes in all his appearances except for Diamonds Are Forever (and even there it's not very clear what actually happens to him), Goldfinger accidentally kills himself by shooting out the window of a plane and being blown out by the ensuing Explosive Decompression, while Rosa Klebb and Emilio Largo are killed by their respective films' Bond Girls. The only bad guy to meet his demise in the manner you might expect is Dr. No, and even that's the result of Bond having the good fortune to wrestle him onto a platform where his mechanical hands become an Achilles' Heel.
• Forceful Kiss: His courtship is anything but subdued.
• Good Is Not Nice: Connery's Bond isn't exactly a pleasant chap, but he can be incredibly charming and is still a good guy.
• Handsome Lech: He doesn't show much affection to the Girls Of The Week in the Guy Hamilton directed films Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever - they're pretty much just rides in the hay.
• Heroic Build: Connery used to be a bodybuilder, after all.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Definitely the most brutal and ruthless of all the film Bonds, but still just as focused on saving the world from evil.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Only when it comes to the correct temperature to serve alcohol. He thinks that 38 degrees Fahrenheit is a good temperature to serve champagne (38 degrees is practically freezing point - it's better served around 55 degrees), and that sake is correctly served at just under 100 degrees Fahrenheit (when it is served at either 50 degrees room temperature, or 120 degrees hot).
• McNinja: In You Only Live Twice, he trains with Tanaka's ninjas and infiltrates Blofeld's volcano base using said techniques.
• Nice to the Waiter:
  • In his first scene, he tips both the dealer and the doorman at Le Cercle with one of his wads of cash winnings, a hint that he doesn't really care about the money, simply the thrill of play.
  • In From Russia with Love, a porter in the hotel in Istanbul lightly coughs and asking Bond if he needs anything else, seemingly to remind him of the tip. Bond nonchalantly sticks what is apparently a rather large sum of money in the porter's pocket, saying, "No, only this." The porter is audibly grateful.
• No Indoor Voice: A fairly restrained version. It's not so much that he shouts a lot, but his voice certainly packs a lot of baritone power.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Connery attempted an RP accent in Dr. No before Not Even Bothering with the Accent.
• The Pornomancer: Even by Bond standards. He's also the only Bond to make a lesbian heterosexual.
• Real Men Wear Pink: In Thunderball, he wears a pink shirt in the Bahamas and in Diamonds are Forever, he wears a pink tie while at Willard Whyte's country house.
• Smoking Is Cool: His Establishing Character Moment pretty much solidifies this with his iconic delivery of the line "Bond, James Bond."
• Stout Strength: He's filled out a bit by Diamonds Are Forever, but is still able to kick ass and take names.
• Thought You Were Dead: In You Only Live Twice, when Blofeld tells that he was presumably assassinated in Hong Kong, Bond responds that this is "his second life".
• Trope Maker: Connery built the standards on Bond's important character traits.
• Younger Than They Look: Sean Connery was 32 when he first stepped into the tuxedo, and looked a decade older. Of course, this actually worked for him, up until Diamonds, where he looked rough for 41.
• Would Hit a Girl: He slaps Tatiana in From Russia with Love, intentionally used Fiona Volpe as a human shield in Thunderball, and he nearly strangles Marie with her own bikini top in Diamonds Are Forever in order to gain information about Blofeld's whereabouts.

George Lazenby

Commander James Bond

"There's no hurry you see — we have all the time in the world."

Played by: George Lazenby ^{Other Languages}Latin American Spanish: Víctor Trujillo | European Spanish: Arsenio Corsellas | Brazilian Portuguese: Márcio Seixas | European French: Jean-Claude Michel, Thibault de Montalembert (Blu-Ray release) | Japanese: Taichirō Hirokawa (TBS edition), Jurota Kosugi (DVD edition)

Appearances: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

"This never happened to the other fella."

— On Her Majesty's Secret Service

The Heartbroken Bond.

Lazenby was an obscure actor and an obscure Bond. He only appeared in one movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. However, it is well liked among hardcore Bond fans and casual viewers alike. The film is widely assumed to be bad, since if it had been good, Lazenby would have made more, right? Well, not really. Lazenby's problems were primarily behind the scenes, and the fact that he was replacing Connery made it a no-win situation with some critics, but most of that criticism has faded with time. The film is well regarded these days among those who have seen it, and even back in 1969 there was every expectation of him continuing in the role. Lazenby says that he didn't return because he was given advice not to. Apparently his agent told him that the Bond franchise was on its way out and hippie movies were the next big thing. Boy, was that wrong. Lazenby fired his agent soon afterwards.

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• Action Hero: He's noticeably far more physical than Connery, no doubt due to Lazenby being a trained martial artist with black belts in Karate and Judo and a former military combat instructor, as well as a sparring partner of Bruce Lee.
• The Cameo: Lazenby reappeared in The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. as an unnamed secret agent wearing a white tuxedo and driving a weaponized Aston Martin DB5 with "JB" on the number plate.
• Cartwright Curse: George Lazenby's loss is probably the most tragic in the series.
• The Casanova: He seduces an entire RESORT of beautiful women.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Tracy starts out as suicidal and emotionally unbalanced, but Bond gives her a reason to live.
• Combat Pragmatist: Even more so than Connery, and possibly to Craig's levels. When Lazenby's Bond fights you, you're in trouble. It probably helped that, unlike Connery, Lazenby was actually a trained martial artist off-screen.
• Continuity Nod: Combined with a rare example of Breaking the Fourth Wall. "This never happened to the other fella." (Which is followed by an opening credits sequence featuring footage from all the preceding Bond films).
• Cool Car: His Aston Martin DBS, complete with a concealed Sniper Rifle. Sadly, it's not as cool as Connery!Bond's DB5 from previous films, as it doesn't have bullet proof glass.
• Downer Ending: His only movie ended on a tragic note.
• Drink-Based Characterization: In addition to vodka martini and chamagne, he orders malt whisky and branch water while at Piz Gloria and is seen drinking beer while being pursued in a Swiss village.
• Drowning My Sorrows: When he runs out of places to go while being chased through a village, he sits at a table with a glass of beer and hopes for the best.
• Heartbroken Badass: After Tracy's death. The front cover of GQ's Nov. 2012 issue◊ called Lazenby's Bond "The Loner" as reference to this trope.^note As well as a Stealth Pun on the fact that Lazenby only portrayed Bond once.
• Heroic Build: As with the Combat Pragmatist element, Lazenby's Bond was a precursor to Craig's Bond in this regard, as his on-screen moments (and set photos) show.
• Impostor Forgot One Detail: His plan to infiltrate a SPECTRE hideout by disguising himself as a baronet and scheduling a planned visit for work reasons is a good idea. However, he doesn't consider keeping his Casanova tendencies under the rug for this mission, and this is what ultimately gets him caught.
• Mr. Fanservice: George Lazenby was one of the world's premier male models after all.
• Ladykiller in Love: He's so in love with Tracy that he's willing to give up his skirt-chasing ways and marry her.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Lazenby played the character under different aliases (respectively "JB" and "James ...") in The Return of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair in 1983 and in "Diamonds Aren't Forever," an episode of the revived Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1989.
• Man in a Kilt: Wears a kilt while undercover at Blofeld's "allergy research clinic". One of the women there attempts to determine if he's Going Commando.
• Manly Tears: After Tracy's death, and damned if they aren't deserved. It cuts away just as they're starting to show, though.it make
• Voice Changeling: He's able to perfectly mimic the speech of a heraldist in order to infiltrate Blofeld's allergy laboratory. In reality, this was just a result of dubbing the actor's voice over Lazenby's.
• Would Hit a Girl: He slaps Tracy across the face when questioning her about the thug who had just tried to kill him.

Roger Moore

Commander James Bond

"Keeping the British end up, Sir!"

Played by: Roger Moore ^{Other Languages}Latin American Spanish: Javier Pontón (all films except The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy), Carlos Rotzinger (The Man with the Golden Gun), Mario Sauret (Octopussy), Jorge Lapuente (The Man with the Golden Gun and Moonraker redubbings) | European Spanish: Constantino Romero | Brazilian Portuguese: André Filho (Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me), Márcio Seixas (Live and Let Die redubbing, The Spy Who Loved Me redubbing, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill) | European French: Claude Bertrand | Czech: Vladimír Brabec | Japanese: Taichirō Hirokawa, Michio Hazama (Octopussy, On-Air Screening version)

Appearances: Live and Let Die | The Man with the Golden Gun | The Spy Who Loved Me | Moonraker | For Your Eyes Only | Octopussy | A View to a Kill

Log Cabin Girl: But James, I need you!

Bond: So does England!

— The Spy Who Loved Me

The Lighthearted Bond.

Moore tended to play his Bond more for comedy, but he did do it pretty serious at times, as in For Your Eyes Only. He hung around for a record tenure of seven movies^note Daniel Craig has surpassed his tenure in years, but not in number of movies, as Craig's films took longer to produce on average, was fifteen years older than Connery was for his first time in the role. He was perhaps the most polarizing Bond actor, since two of his movies — The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only — are among the most well-received films in the series, while Moonraker and A View to a Kill are considered among the worst.

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• Adaptational Dye-Job: He had brown hair as opposed to the traditional black.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: From The Spy Who Loved Me onward, Roger’s Bond is probably the nicest incarnation of the character. Being a humorous gentleman who is far happier than the ones before and after him.
• Adaptational Personality Change: The farthest removed from the book character of all the onscreen incarnations, he's considerably more humorous, dapper and upbeat.
• Badass Bookworm: Roger Moore's character compensated for not being as tough as Sean Connery by acting like 007 had an IQ in the excess of 200 and expertise on every subject in the world.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Despite his more debonair persona, Moore's Bond is capable of ruthlessness that wouldn't be out of place in Dalton's or Craig's films. The more memorable examples are in For Your Eyes Only when he has Locque's car balanced precariously on a cliff and kicks it over the edge, and his casual execution of Sandor in The Spy Who Loved Me.
  • Moore also has one of the highest bodycounts in the series with 121 onscreen kills, the highest for any Bond for 30 years until Craig's Bond surpassed the total in Spectre.
• Captain Crash: Has a tendency to wreck cars in often hilarious ways; He dents Melina's 2CV badly in For Your Eyes Only, drives Orlov's car onto train tracks and subsequently into the path of an oncoming train in Octopussy and, most famously in A View to a Kill, engages in a chase through the streets of Paris in an increasingly truncated Renault 11, finishing by driving the front half of the car around (stunt coordinator Rémy Julienne was quite fond of this trick).
• The Casanova: Same as Connery. The front cover of GQ's Nov. 2012 issue◊ labelled Moore's Bond as "The Lover" to denote this trope as his most distinctive trait.
• Character Development: Bond is a royal jerk in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, but he's mellowed out by The Spy Who Loved Me.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He draws the line at Bibi's attempts to seduce him, since she's clearly supposed to be underage.
• Cigar Chomper: His incarnation was the first version that smoked cigars instead of cigarettes. Since then, only Brosnan's version has done likewise. This was something else unique that Moore had brought to the character, as he loved cigars in real life and even made good supplies of them a clause in his film contracts with Eon Productions.
• Combat Pragmatist: In close quarters combat, he tends to use the environment to his advantage, particularly by making use of Improvised Weapons and throwing his opponents off ledges and out of windows.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: In Live and Let Die, he had a number of elements to distinguish him from Sean Connery, such as smoking cigars rather than cigarettes, drinking champagne and scotch rather than his famous martini and using a .44 Magnum rather than Bond's usual Walther PPK. That was in addition to being far more light-hearted and debonair than the more taciturn Connery version, a trait which stayed throughout Moore's tenure.
• Cool Car: The Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me. It could turn into a submarine when needed. The Lotus seen in For Your Eyes Only had a selfdestruct system that would activate if anyone tried to break into the car.
• The Dandy: Roger Moore loves his clothes, and used his own tailors for his version of Bond. Also, the tradition of Bond wearing a tuxedo in the gunbarrel sequence started with him.
• Disposable Woman: Roger Moore's Bond is even more heartless than Sean Connery's version in his early films. He improved as time went on, and by For Your Eyes Only, he probably had as healthy a relationship with women as he's ever had (a 16-year-old girl trying to seduce him notwithstanding). Averted also in another way: Moore's Bond has the distinction of referencing 007's murdered wife, Tracy, not once but twice during his tenure, admitting in The Spy Who Loved Me that her death remains a sore spot for him.
• Does Not Like Guns: Roger Moore kills a ridiculous amount of bad guys on screen. According to Auralnauts, he has the highest body count in the series, at 121 kills. However, he only rarely does so using a gun. He prefers to toss them off buildings or use elaborately odd weapons like an explosive air pellet. In Moonraker, he never carries his PPK, instead using a concealed wrist-mounted dartgun. That said, he's also actually shot the Big Bad on at least two occasions, the only other Bond to do so being Pierce Brosnan, though one of those occasions was specifically in a pistol duel.
• Double Entendre: The end of The Spy Who Loved Me has one of the greatest in the series, when M, Grey, and Gogol catch Bond and Agent Triple X in the throes of passion.
  M: 007!
  Gogol: Triple X!
  Defence Minister Grey: Bond, what do you think you're doing?
  Bond: (Beat) Keeping the British end up, sir! (closes curtain)
• Drink-Based Characterization: In Live and Let Die, in an effort to be as different from Connery as possible, he drinks bourbon and water with no ice. While abroad, he samples Phuyuck in Hong Kong (which he doesn't like) and Ouzu in Greece.
• Evil Counterpart: Scaramanga considers himself as this.
• Gentleman Snarker: The most comedic Bond, in fact.
• Handsome Lech: His courtship was pretty shady in his first two films, but by The Spy Who Loved Me, he'd become a lot more gentlemanly.
• Improbable Weapon User: He employs some pretty outlandish weaponry when he's stuck, most notably the shark pellet from Live and Let Die.
• Jerkass: In his first two films, especially The Man with the Golden Gun.
• Lighter and Softer: His movies were fairly light compared to the original films with Sean Connery and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and especially when compared to the Timothy Dalton films that followed.
• Long-Runners: He's the longest on-screen Bond in the film series, playing the character in seven movies over twelve years.
• May–December Romance: Moore became Bond at 45 and left the role at 57. Most Bond Girls used to be 15 to 20 years younger than him. This was no problem in the early films, because Moore still looked much younger than his true age. However, in the last three films, Moore has clearly aged, and the age difference between him and the Bond Girls has become more evident to the point of being creepy. The worst cases are with Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only and Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill, where their respective actresses, Carole Bouquet and Tanya Roberts, were 30 years younger than Moore. It is telling that in both films Bond's relationship with them ends up feeling paternal rather than romantic, with the only sex scenes feeling rather perfunctory. Moore liked to tell the story that he realised he was too old for the role when he found out he was older than Tanya Roberts' mother.
• Mood Whiplash: Like Brosnan's era, Moore's Bond movies were interlaced with some very serious scenes and some very silly ones.
• Nice Guy: Starting with The Spy Who Loved Me, Moore's Bond becomes the friendliest version of the character so far. He's still a shameless womaniser and ruthless to his enemies, but is much less rude and confrontational than the other incarnations.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Moore's James Bond was always playing nicer than he really was, as his many cold-blooded executions across his movies proves.
• "Oh, Crap!" Smile: Moore's Bond tended to give a hilariously wan little grin when he met someone who could No-Sell his punches, like Jaws.
• Older and Wiser: Especially in For Your Eyes Only, where he warns Melina about the double-edged nature of revenge, speaking as though from experience (having avenged his wife by killing Blofeld in the pre-titles sequence, this was likely intentional).
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: With Kananga in Live and Let Die and Max Zorin and May Day in A View to a Kill. Inverted with Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun, Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me and Kamal Khan in Octopussy.
• Older Than They Look: Roger Moore was three years older than Sean Connery, and looked about 10 years younger when he was cast as Bond at 45. Even in the later movies, where he's visibly aged a fair bit, he looks damn good for a man pushing 60.
• Omniglot: He is shown to know more languages than the other Bonds.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You know that something's wrong when he isn't compelled to make a Bond One-Liner or any kind of witticism, such as the centrifuge scene in Moonraker, or when he is horrified and furious to discover Orlov's cruel plan in Octopussy.
• Quintessential British Gentleman: His Bond is easily the most gentlemanly.
• Real Men Cook: In A View to a Kill, he cooks a mean quiche lorraine for him and Stacy.
• Stiff Upper Lip: He maintains his equanimous composure, despite mayhem so often surronding him—moreso perhaps than the other Bonds.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Starting in The Spy Who Loved Me. After acting like a complete jerk in the first two movies, Bond acts most sympathetically and kindly to the main Bond Girl Anya Amasova, even understanding her anger when she learns that he killed her boyfriend (though at the same time Bond defends and justifies his actions). In For Your Eyes Only, he clearly sympathizes with Melina Havelock and mourns the tragic death of her parents. In A View to a Kill, he even cooks for Stacey Sutton.
• The Trickster: He loves messing with the villains.
• Tuxedo and Martini: While James Bond is the Trope Codifier, Moore's Bond took it to extremes by showing up in a tuxedo in some ridiculous locations, such as the Eiffel Tower and the middle of a carnival in Rio Di Janeiro. He actually exploits this trope in The Man with the Golden Gun by disguising himself as Scaramanga's Bond mannequin by putting on its tuxedo.
• Verbal Tic: Toward the end of his tenure, Moore's Bond gained a tendency to begin sentences with "Well."
• Weirdness Magnet: Moore's Bond always went up against the most cartoonish villains, ranging from Voodoo priests to sumo wrestlers to seven foot plus implacable men to circus knife throwers. The weirdness reaches its apex in Moonraker, where Bond goes up against a plot to depopulate the world from space and ends up throwing the Big Bad out of an airlock into space.
• Would Hit a Girl: He almost breaks Andrea Anders' arm in The Man with the Golden Gun while interrogating her (this scene greatly displeased Moore). In The Spy Who Loved Me, 007 deploys a missile that destroys a helicopter along with its female pilot Naomi; given that the death of Fiona in Thunderball may not have been orchestrated by Bond (the film leaves it ambiguous), Naomi is the first woman Bond intentionally and knowingly kills.

Timothy Dalton

Commander James Bond

"I guess I've always liked a challenge."

Played by: Timothy Dalton ^{Other Languages}Latin American Spanish: Edgar Wald (The Living Daylights), Antonio Farré (Licence to Kill) | European Spanish: Salvador Vidal | Brazilian Portuguese: Márcio Seixas | European French: Edgar Givry (The Living Daylights), Guy Chapellier (Licence to Kill) | Czech: Ladislav Beneš | Japanese: Shinji Ogawa (TBS edition), Hirotaka Suzuoki (The Living Daylights, 1998 TV Asahi edition), Hōchū Ōtsuka (DVD edition), Masane Tsukayama (The Living Daylights, on-screen airing), Hideyuki Tanaka (Licence to Kill VHS), Kōichi Yamadera (Licence to Kill, TV Asahi dub), Takashi Taniguchi (Licence to Kill, on-screen airing)

Appearances: The Living Daylights | Licence to Kill

M: This private vendetta of yours could easily compromise Her Majesty's government. You have an assignment, and I expect you to carry it out objectively and professionally!

Bond: Then you have my resignation, sir!

— Licence to Kill

The Ruthless Bond.

Dalton began the trend of portraying Bond with a darker tone that was much closer to Fleming's, and is still considered the darkest of all of them (rivaled only by Daniel Craig), which some felt was needed after the sometimes overly comedic Moore films. He was also a fan of the books and tried to create Ian Fleming's Bond on-screen twenty years before Craig and the Bond producers ever thought of doing so. At the same time, he has also been praised for having the most realistic love scenes. The producers actually considered him for On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but he felt he was too young (only 23) at the time.

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• 10-Minute Retirement: In Licence to Kill, where he goes AWOL to pursue revenge on Sanchez.
• AM/FM Characterization: In The Living Daylights, he listens to jazz stations while driving from Bratislava to Vienna.
• The Atoner: Licence to Kill has been interpreted by many as Bond trying to atone for his failure to protect Tracy after seeing his friend Felix also lose his wife.
• Baritone of Strength: Arguably the deepest voice of all the Bonds.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's capable of being very charming and is a caring and devoted friend but he's arguably the most frightening of all the Bonds when angered as Licence To Kill illustrates at various points and he gets some of the most brutal kills in the whole series.
• Blessed with Suck: Dalton's character seems awfully annoyed that he has a fabulous life of impossibly beautiful women and world travel. There's even a rather interesting publicity shot from The Living Daylights that has him sitting in the centre surrounded by many beautiful women while looking bored.
• Bloodier and Gorier: He's much more ruthless with his executions in Licence to Kill.
• Byronic Hero: Dalton's version of Bond, while still charismatic, was also dark and brooding, emotionally sensitive and conflicted and moody, even bipolar, intensely self-critical regarding his job, introspective, cynical, world-weary, and jaded, yet extremely passionate, with strong personal beliefs which are usually in conflict with the values of his job. Helped by the fact that Dalton has also played Rochester in a 1983 miniseries version of Jane Eyre.
• The Charmer: Oddly, not as much of a Chick Magnet as his predecessors. To compensate, however, he tends to form closer attachments with women than the previous iterations.
• Cold Sniper: While all of the various incarnations of Bond are excellent marksmen, Dalton's Bond is the only one to undertake a Sniping Mission in each of his films. In The Living Daylights, he's given a Walter WA 2000 for countersniper duty to help cover Koskov's defection. In Licence To Kill, Q kits him out with a sniper rifle disguised as a camera complete with palm print reader to attempt to kill Sanchez, which fails because a team sent to eliminate him got the drop on him before he could pull the trigger.
• Cool Car: Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante in The Living Daylights. It comes with machine guns, a rocket-launcher, wheel lasers, a snowmobile conversion and most famously, a giant rocket booster.
• The Cynic: In direct contrast to Moore, he had a sardonic, world-weary edge.
• Darker and Edgier: Differed very much from Roger Moore's version, and to some extent, he's still the darkest version of the character.
• Drink-Based Characterization: His champagne of choice is Bollinger RD. He also drinks Jim Beam on Felix Leiter's yacht and a Budweiser with lime in the Florida Keys.
• Grand Romantic Gesture:
  • When compared to the previous (and later) versions Dalton's Bond has a bit of a knack for sweet romantic gestures towards his Bond girls.
  • In The Living Daylights, he bunks off the latest mission he's been assigned to in order to hear Kara's first concert in the west, and surprises her by sneaking into her dressing room to prepare a romantic encounter with drinks.
  • In Licence to Kill, after seeing Pam flee the party heartbroken after Lupe begins to flirt with him again, he jumps off a balcony into a swimming pool below in order to catch her.
• Heartbroken Badass: In Licence to Kill, to the point where he's highly reluctant to have Pam and Q help him on his mission to take down Sanchez.
• Honey Trap: One of the few occasions that Bond is explicitly identified as being such.
• It's Personal:
  • In The Living Daylights, Bond is particularly furious when Saunders is murdered by Necros just to send him a message. After that, he takes drastic measures to defeat the villains.
  • In Licence to Kill, Sanchez destroyed Felix Leiter's life almost completely. Bond is not pleased. When his superiors tell him to forget what happened and return to his work routine, he deserts from the Secret Service and goes after Sanchez.
• Knight in Sour Armour: More than the previous versions, takes a cynical view toward his missions and his MI6 superiors. That still won't prevent him from doing the right thing, whether part of his assignment or not.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's essentially Iago to Sanchez's Othello in Licence to Kill.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Licence to Kill. No mission, just a personal revenge.
• Rogue Agent: In Licence to Kill, he goes rogue to avenge Felix and his wife.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Although all the Bonds are willing to disobey orders to do what's necessary, Dalton's Bond seems more inclined to take ethical and moral objections to some of his orders. He merely wounds a sniper instead of killing her in The Living Daylights because he can tell at a glance that she's an inexperienced civilian out of her depth rather than being a professional ("Stuff your orders — I only kill professionals"). In the same movie, he's reluctant to assassinate General Pushkin because he respects the Soviet and doesn't believe that he's a murderous psycho, only agreeing out of honour ("If it must be done, I'll do it."). His Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Licence to Kill is prompted by his disgust that his superiors and the American authorities aren't going to do anything to avenge Felix Leiter, but the fact that Leiter's wife was brutally murdered as well really seems to outrage him. The front cover of GQ's Nov. 2012 issue◊ even gave Dalton's Bond the designation "The Rebel" because he embodies this trope more than the others.
• Sherlock Scan: He notices Kara Milovy is not a real assassin seeing how she handles her sniper rifle. Given that he is a Professional Killer, his ability to recognize a true assassin from a novice is justified.
• Smoking Is Cool: He was the last Bond to smoke cigarettes.
• Tranquil Fury: When Bond gets truly furious and ruthless, he gets extremely calm and soft-spoken and it's absolutely terrifying as his brutal murder of Ed Kilifer demonstrates.
• Turn in Your Badge: In Licence to Kill, as a result of his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Trying Not to Cry: At the sight of Della (implied to be an old flame before marrying Felix) lying raped and lifeless on her wedding-bed, Dalton's incarnation is the only Bond (Craig's included) to cry out in grief (DELLA!) and panic while desperately searching for Felix, frantically calling for an ambulance when he found his friend alive but mutilated; all the while visibly holding in the tears of rage and sorrow welling in his eyes.
• Warrior Poet: Bond has at least one lengthy dissertation about how he hates his job and it would be doing him a favour to fire him.
• When He Smiles: Given his ultra-serious demeanour, he rarely smiles. When he does though, it's very welcome.
• Would Hit a Girl: In The Living Daylights, his superiors accuse him of the opposite trope, at least if she's beautiful, after he risks a defection by shooting the gun out of a female sniper's hands instead of shooting her dead. Bond counters that he has no problem shooting women, attractive or otherwise—what he has a problem with is shooting people who aren't involved in the spy business; he could tell from the way the supposed KGB sniper was handling her gun that she wasn't experienced with firearms, and therefore couldn't be a trained assassin.

Pierce Brosnan

Commander James Bond

"What, no small talk? No chit-chat? That's the trouble with the world today, no one takes the time to do a really sinister interrogation anymore. It's a lost art."

Played by: Pierce Brosnan ^{Other Languages}Latin American Spanish: Salvador Delgado (GoldenEye, Die Another Day), Idzi Dutkiewicz (Tomorrow Never Dies), Milton Wolch (The World Is Not Enough) | European Spanish: Abel Folk (Eduardo Jover, who voiced Brosnan in Remington Steele, voiced him in a GoldenEye trailer but Folk was opted to be the most suitable voice actor) | Brazilian Portuguese: Luiz Feier Motta (all but Tomorrow Never Dies), Leonardo Camillo (Tomorrow Never Dies), Luiz Antônio Lobue (GoldenEye, VHS), Carlos Campanile (Tomorrow Never Dies, VHS) | European French: Emmanuel Jacomy | Japanese: Akira Kamiya (GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, DVD), Hideyuki Tanaka (TV Asahi), Masashi Ebara (Tomorrow Never Dies, Fuji TV), Wataru Yokojima (The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day, VHS & DVD)

Appearances: GoldenEye | Tomorrow Never Dies | The World Is Not Enough | Die Another Day

M: You don't like me, Bond. You don't like my methods. You think I'm an accountant; a bean counter more interested in my numbers than your "instincts."

Bond: The thought had occurred to me.

M: Good, because I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms, though wasted on me, obviously appealed to that young woman I sent out to evaluate you.

Bond: Point taken.

— GoldenEye

The Composite Bond.

Brosnan is the person whom people tend to think of when they imagine Bond in the post-Cold War era, especially among viewers who came of age in The '90s and GoldenEye was the first Bond flick they saw. He was supposed to appear in The Living Daylights, but the production staff of Remington Steele decided to pull a fast one on Eon Productions. Brosnan was just what the franchise needed after the six-year hiatus due to legal issues, and he was the first actor since Connery whose casting was widely embraced by the general public even before GoldenEye came out. Brosnan openly admitted that he took a mixture of different qualities from his predecessors for his portrayal of the character. He also scores points for looking the most like Bond as Ian Fleming described him (black hair that falls into a comma over the right eye, cold blue eyes). Brosnan was a self-admitted Ascended Fanboy: the very first movie he ever saw was Goldfinger; also, his late wife, Cassandra Harris, appeared in For Your Eyes Only.

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• '80s Hair: He kept his poofy Remington Steele hairdo^note this was done on purpose to appeal to Brosnan's fans from the show (but toned down a bit) for GoldenEye; in fact, the easiest way to tell that he only filmed one gun barrel scene for his run as Bond is his big hair. He changed to a more modern style by the time Tomorrow Never Dies rolled around.
• The Ace: Has a habit of upstaging people (but usually the villain) at whatever their skillset is. No matter what they can do or how long they've been doing it, Bond will do it better than them with no prep time or practice. At least when it comes to sword fighting, this trope even applies to Brosnan in Real Life, as Toby Stephens^note it's worth noting that Stephens is 16 years Brosnan's junior and has a more muscular build than his older co-star reveals in one of the bonus features on the Die Another Day Blu-Ray.
  Stephens: I'm slightly cheesed off with Pierce, who hardly came in, has just picked [the sword fighting] up as we've gone along. I mean, he's brilliant, he's just gone on with it, while I've been practicing it for months!
• Always Save the Girl: It's his natural inclination to do this.
  • GoldenEye: There is a double subversion in the train scene because he tells Alec to go ahead and kill Natalya (a civilian), but Bond chooses to save her life first even though he knows Trevelyan and Xenia will most likely escape.
  • Tomorrow Never Dies: Subverted when Mr. Stamper threatens to drown Wai Lin. Although Bond had promised her twice that they would survive the mission together, she (a fellow agent) reminds him that it's his duty to destroy the missile, so he focuses on the task at hand.
  • The World Is Not Enough: As he is chasing Elektra, an imprisoned M (who fears that she may soon die in a nuclear meltdown if Renard has his way) yells out Bond's name as he passes by her cell. 007 then uses the Shoot Out the Lock method to free his boss before he continues his pursuit. And the first thing he does when boarding Renard's submarine is to free Christmas Jones from captivity inside a small room.
    Bond: Thought I'd forgotten you already?
  • Die Another Day: While Graves and his team are preparing to flee Iceland, Bond's priority after he kills Zao should've been to go after them, but instead he rescues Jinx, who was drowning in the melting ice palace.
• The Atoner: Trevelyan straight up asks him, "...if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women for all the dead ones you failed to protect." Bond's attitude throughout Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day (specifically his desperate attempt to resuscitate Jinx) indicates that this statement has left him pretty rattled.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: With M. There is often friction between the two of them, but deep down they're fond of each other. The most obvious example occurs in GoldenEye, where M delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Bond and even says she has no problem sending him to his death as long as it was worthwhile, yet M's farewell to him is:
  M: Bond?
  Bond: (turns around to look at her)
  M: (tries to hide a smile) Come back alive.
  Bond: (smiles warmly at her)
• Badass Driver: One of the franchise's best, a prime example being his remote control back seat run through a parking lot in Hamburg in his BMW during Tomorrow Never Dies.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Played with in Die Another Day. He is filthy with a shaggy beard and hair after being tortured for 14 months. This is Bond at his most unkempt in the entire series, and audiences at the time were a bit shocked to see the character in such a dishevelled state. However, Bond is still in remarkably good shape for someone who had endured that type of hell for so long. All it takes are a single shave, a hair cut, a shower, some good food and a change of clothes for Bond to become his old self again.
• Beard of Sorrow: More like a Beard of Imprisonment near the beginning of Die Another Day.
• Beneath the Mask: The suave, sophisticated mask that he normally wears hides both a deep-seated bitterness and a surprising amount of tenderness.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Brosnan's Bond is capable of killing a foe in cold blood with subdued satisfaction if they have personally wronged him, as seen with Alec Trevelyan, Dr Kaufman and Elektra King, contrasting with most Bonds' distate for such an act.
• Captain Crash: Natalya is utterly convinced that Bond destroys every vehicle that he gets into; she's not entirely wrong. He drives a motorcycle off a cliff into a nosediving plane and barely straightens it in time; he barely manages to eject out of a helicopter before its own missiles destroy it; he wrecks a huge portion of St. Petersburg in a tank by ramming right through buildings; he derails an armoured train by firing a tank shell at it, and then uses the tank as a roadblock; he barely escapes the booby-trapped train before it blows up; then, in Cuba, the plane he's flying gets shot down by a surface-to-air missile. In Tomorrow Never Dies, he famously runs his BMW 750 off the top floor of a multi-storey car park and into the Avis rental office by remote. The Aston Martin Vanquish from Die Another Day wasn't destroyed either.
• Carpet of Virility: Like Sean Connery before him, several shots linger on his.
• The Charmer: Like Dalton's version, there is at least one Bond Girl in each movie whom he sincerely likes. M invokes this trope when she says, "...[your] boyish charms, though wasted on me, obviously appealed to that young woman I sent to evaluate you." The front cover of GQ's Nov. 2012 issue◊ even used this trope's title as Brosnan's Bond most defining feature.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: When Pierce Brosnan's Bond smiles at you, you know you're in trouble.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He's just as prone to bawdy innuendos and sleeping around as the other Bonds. The big difference is that he genuinely cares about the women in his life, and does everything he can to keep them safe. He is affectionate towards Natalya, Paris got "too close for comfort," he is unusually protective of Wai Lin even before they officially become allies, he falls in love with Elektra, and his sheer panic (and later relief) when he attempts to resuscitate Jinx proves that she's not just a notch on his bedpost.
• Composite Character: Of Connery's masculinity, Lazenby's vulnerability, Moore's snarky British gentleman and Dalton's gritty secret agent. Brosnan's interpretation of 007 was therefore the most versatile among the actors.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Brosnan's Bond was the first identified as an orphan as per Ian Fleming's backstory.
• Cool Car: Various BMW models, especially the 750 in Tomorrow Never Dies that can be driven by remote and is not only resistant to sledgehammers, but also electrocutes any would be thieves. And an Aston Martin once again in Die Another Day.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Brosnan's Bond is the same arrogant chauvinist that Connery's and Moore's were, but the world around him is a lot more forward-thinking and fed up with his politically incorrect attitude.
• Destructive Saviour: Lampshaded in this exchange from The World Is Not Enough:
  Sir Robert King: Be careful, M, I might try to steal him from you.
  Bond: Construction isn't exactly my speciality.
  M: Quite the opposite, in fact.
• Double Entendre: A drinking game could be made out of every time Brosnan looks uncomfortable with these. The actor has admitted that he absolutely despised having to say those lines.
• Drowning My Sorrows: In Tomorrow Never Dies, with vodka shots in his hotel room after he shuts down the power at Carver's party.
• The Dulcinea Effect: This is a stronger trait in Brosnan's Bond because it's made explicit in GoldenEye that he's constantly trying to atone for the women whose lives he wasn't able to save. He is protective towards all of the good (and two who pretend to be good) Bond Girls.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He was visibly shocked and betrayed that not only did Trevelyan survive the Arkhangelsk explosion, but is also the Big Bad of GoldenEye.
• Foil:
  • To Alec Trevelyan, who is an Evil Counterpart of himself and is equal to him in every way.
  • To Xenia Onatopp, a Dark Action Girl who shares three of Bond's passions: motoring, baccarat and sex (although in the case of the latter, she's far more violent and sadistic than he is).
• Genre Deconstruction: Of the suave super-agent archetype. Both his first film and final film open with this trope. In GoldenEye, his Cold War misogynist personality only earns him derision from his female boss. In Die Another Day, he proves incapable of breaking out of a high-security military custody on his own, and only manages to get his freedom back because his superiors trade him with an enemy agent.
• Gentleman Snarker: His default setting, but Gustav Graves knows it's just a performance: "The unjustifiable swagger, the crass quips, the self-defence mechanisms concealing such inadequacy."
• The Hero: Brosnan's Bond was specifically catered to '90s tastes and sensibilities in order to appeal to the broadest audience possible (especially women, as the actor already had a built-in female fanbase from Remington Steele), so his 007 was devised as a "sensitive action hero." As a result, Brosnan's Bond became the most romantic^note for instance, his character falls in love with two women, plus critics have observed that Brosnan's sex scenes focused more on him "making love" to his leading ladies rather than "ploughing" through them and the most violent^note his reign relied more heavily on his character running around and shooting baddies with automatic weapons, which was in vogue for action flicks during this time period in comparison to the other actors. Although Brosnan's average onscreen kill count is the highest in the franchise, revealing a more gentler side to his personality made his 007 more sympathetic and accessible to casual '90s moviegoers.
• Hero's Classic Car: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and a deleted scene from The World is Not Enough show him driving the 1964 Aston Martin DB5.
• Hidden Depths: Like all Bond incarnations, he's a playboy. Unlike many of them, he's one of the few who is actually good at the more mundane aspects of spying such as surveillance and breaking in and entering.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Natalya calls him out on it in GoldenEye.
  Natalya: How can you act like this? How can you be so cold?
  Bond: It's what keeps me alive.
  Natalya: No, it's what keeps you alone.
• Honey Trap: He is under orders from M to "pump" his Old Flame Paris Carver for information about her media mogul husband's organization, which he reluctantly does even though he knows the seduction will put Paris' life in danger.
• Icy Blue Eyes: The instant he slips off his debonair exterior, the Death Glare in his blue eyes is all you need to see in order to know that he means business. Robert Carlyle even makes note of this quality in the "Bond Cocktail" featurette on The World Is Not Enough Blu-Ray.
  Carlyle: [Brosnan]'s just got that Celtic edge to him, really, and I think he's got that hardness to him [...] ...you can believe that Pierce Brosnan could kill you, actually. He's got something in his eyes.
• It's Personal: The villains who get under his skin are Alec Trevelyan, Elektra King, Elliot Carver and Miranda Frost (she's notable in that Bond attempted to shoot her in the head the moment he discovered that she was The Mole in MI6 who betrayed him, but he failed to get his revenge because Miranda jammed the firing mechanism of his gun the night before).
• Kill the Ones You Love: He's the only Bond who has experienced the tragedy of executing a woman he loves, namely Elektra.
• Knight in Sour Armour: He notes in The World Is Not Enough that "Cold-blooded murder is a filthy business." As distasteful as it is to him, he'll do whatever it takes in to get the job done.
• Lack of Empathy: Subverted. Although he seems callously aloof when he takes a life, Trevelyan asks him in GoldenEye "...if all those vodka martinis ever silence the screams of all the men you've killed," which suggests that Bond is haunted by the murders that he has committed. Bond himself mentions in The World Is Not Enough, "I usually hate killing an unarmed man." He is unnerved by the sight of Miranda Frost's corpse, whom he had tried to murder earlier on in Die Another Day because she was The Mole at MI6. Bond isn't the one who is responsible for her death, yet his facial expression leaves no doubt that he finds it unsettling even though he wanted Miranda dead for betraying him.
• Ladykiller in Love: It's downplayed in his case because he wasn't given a romance which was explored as deeply as Tracy di Vicenzo or Vesper Lynd, but his character is nonetheless unique in the original continuity because he falls in love with two women (Paris Carver and Elektra King).
• Lighter and Softer: In comparison to Dalton's Bond, although that doesn't mean he can't be deadly serious.
• Love Hurts: He only permits himself a brief moment to grieve over the corpses of Paris Carver and Elektra King. In both cases, he touches their hair before he must carry on with his mission.
• Loveable Rogue: Closer to this than earlier iterations. Even Valentin Zukovsky can't bring himself to truly screw him over.
• Manchild: More so than any other actor, Brosnan placed greater emphasis on his character being an emotionally stunted man. Bond fears commitment in a romantic relationship because he abandons his girlfriend Paris when he realizes that he's falling in love with her. Witness his childish glee as he "drives" his remote-controlled car during the multi-level parking lot chase scene. After Wai Lin compliments him on his motorcycle skills, his reply invokes this trope: "Well, that comes from not growing up at all." M describes his brand of charisma as "boyish," and Q says "Grow up, 007!" twice in exasperation. Alec asks Bond, "Why can't you just be a good boy and die?", Natalya accuses him of being "boys with toys," and Jinx scoffs, "You're a big boy; I figured you could handle yourself." M even vaguely serves as a maternal figure towards Bond, which further emphasizes his immaturity.
• Manipulative Bastard: Downplayed compared to Dalton's version, but still present in GoldenEye. He seduces the psychologist MI6 sends out to evaluate him in order to receive a passing score. He also has no problem using Natalya's hacking skills as a wild card against Trevelyan during the climax.
• Master of Your Domain: In Die Another Day, he is able to lower his heart rate to the point where it appeared that he was dying.
• Master Swordsman: In Die Another Day, when he gets into a sword fight with Gustav Graves. It's implied part of his military and/or MI6 training included some knowledge on swordsmanship and using several different types of swords, including heavy sabres, katanas, hand-and-a-halfs, etc.
• Messy Hair: He was a prisoner in North Korea for 14 months, so naturally his hair becomes untidy and long without any grooming.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Changes sidearms after losing his PPK in Tomorrow Never Dies, opting for the Walther P99 that he obtains from Wai Ling. He notes that he asked Q to get him one and it subsequently becomes the standard sidearm of MI6 until Daniel Craig's Bond switches back to the PPK.
• More Dakka: Pierce Brosnan expended more ammunition than all other Bonds combined. When he is in action, he was mostly seen with an automatic weapon alongside his sidearm.
• Mood Whiplash: The Brosnan films have some of the darkest moments in the entire series; for example, Bond's execution of his own lover Elektra King, and being tortured in North Korea for 14 months. Yet mixed in with this was a dependency on puns and gadgetry.
• Nerves of Steel: In GoldenEye, he's surrounded by machine gun fire as he's arming a bomb in the Supervillain Lair, and he simply tilts his head to the left when bullets nearly hit his head, acting as if they're no more a nuisance than a house fly.
• New Old Flame: Paris Carver, whom Bond had dated and dumped at some point before Tomorrow Never Dies because she "got too close for comfort."
• Obfuscating Stupidity: What he normally does. When he drops the act, run like the wind.
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: This occurs with Alec Trevelyan, Elektra King and Gustav Graves. The only one to avert it is Elliot Carver.
• One-Man Army: On average, he kills more people on-screen than any other Bond by a wide margin. His personal kill count in GoldenEye alone was 47, according to this article.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Tomorrow Never Dies: After Paris Carver is murdered, Bond calls Elliot Carver by his given name instead of his surname as a sign of disrespect and of how much more personal the conflict between them has become because Bond had truly loved Paris. He had only done this once before with another villain (Alec Trevelyan, who used to be his best friend).
  • The World Is Not Enough: He typically slays baddies without a second thought, but he's willing to spare Elektra King's life and simply arrest her if she aborts the Evil Plan because he's still in love with her. Bond even gives Elektra not just one, but three chances to live ("Call him off. I won't ask again; call him off. CALL HIM OFF!!!"), but the Big Bad foolishly ignores his threats.
• Parental Abandonment: GoldenEye was the first film to mention his parents' deaths during a climbing accident when he was a child.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Subjects this to Elektra King, who had almost killed him in a garrotte chair, shot Zukovsky, imprisoned M, and masterminded the plan to nuke Istanbul.
• Perpetual Frowner: When he's serious.
• Perpetual Smiler: He's usually got a boyish grin on his face... although it's rarely genuine.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Every villain in his movies is dispatched with one. He also delivers an utterly chilling one to the man who murdered Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies.
  Dr. Kaufman: Wait! I'm just a professional doing a job!
  Bond: Me too.
• Product Placement: Dressed almost exclusively by Brioni (which resulted in a really obvious shot of packaged shirts in Die Another Day).
• Pungeon Master: Q actually tells him off for it in GoldenEye after they blow up a mannequin with an exploding pen.
  Q: Don't say it!
  Bond: ...The writing's on the wall?
  Q: Along with the rest of him!
• Refuge in Audacity: In Die Another Day, when he tries to check into a fancy Hong Kong hotel looking like he had barely survived a shipwreck. He just struts into the lobby like he owns the place, and pays no heed to the shocked gasps or Disapproving Looks of the guests and staff.
• Rogue Agent: In Die Another Day, he loses his 00 status and becomes a prisoner of MI6 until they can determine just how culpable he was with the information leak that led to the execution of an American agent. Bond manages to escape the British vessel holding him captive, and he operates on his own until M unofficially recruits him to investigate Gustav Graves.
• Rule of Sexy: The producers found excuses to show off Brosnan's Carpet of Virility even outside of bed scenes.
  • GoldenEye: Strictly speaking, the first fight scene between Bond and Xenia didn't have to occur near the pool of his hotel, but it did allow for a few Female Gaze shots of him swimming, and in addition to only being dressed in his swimming trunks, he's dripping wet during their confrontation.
  • Tomorrow Never Dies: The first few buttons of the blue shirt he wears in Saigon are undone, so much of his chest is exposed. Ditto for the black shirt he sports under his combat vest during the final battle. In fact, Bond displays more skin than Wai Lin throughout the entire movie! This is probably the first time in the franchise where 007 is objectified more than a Bond Girl.
  • Die Another Day: There is no valid reason for him to be shirtless during his first scene with M (the doctors had already done a thorough scan on his body some time ago, and Bond was merely resting before M visits him). He later escapes from the warship, and although he's wearing a blue shirt, he doesn't bother to button it even before he enters a posh Hong Kong hotel. For the sake of decorum, you'd expect that Bond would at least cover up his torso.
• Shoot the Dog: Willing to kill former lover Elektra. But then again, she is the villain and had just tried to break his neck.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: He's fond of throwing the villain's motive rants back in their faces.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: He calls smoking a filthy habit in Tomorrow Never Dies. Besides a cigar in Die Another Day, Brosnan's Bond doesn't indulge in tobacco.
• Technically a Smile: Easily his most frightening expression.
• Tranquil Fury: If a villain's really gotten under his skin, the flippant attitude totally disappears.
• Unkempt Beauty: The make-up department tried to make Brosnan look as unattractive as possible after his character had been imprisoned and beaten up for 14 months, yet the director of Die Another Day undid some of its intended effect by giving the actor a gratuitous Shirtless Scene, so Bond still appears quite healthy (and remains at least somewhat desirable in the eyes of Brosnan's fangirls) in spite of the long-term torture.
• Verbal Tic: Toward the end of his tenure, Brosnan's Bond picked up the habit of ending sentences with "eh?"
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: There is a quasi-mother/son dynamic between him and M. In Tomorrow Never Dies, he is somewhat mortified when he discovers that M knows about his past sexual encounters (almost like a naughty boy who has been caught by his stern mother), and Bond even tries to defend his promiscuous behaviour with, "That was a long time ago, M, before [Paris] was married." In The World Is Not Enough, M mentions to Elektra King that Bond is her best agent, but she'd never tell him that in person. In Die Another Day, Bond's delivery of "You burn me, and now you want my help" is petulant and resentful, and the hurt he feels towards M for not trusting him earlier is more personal than professional. Brosnan even said that he wished that it was his Bond the one who was with M when she died in Skyfall.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Brosnan's English accent is... inconsistent to say the least.
• When He Smiles: It's rare, but when he does show a heartfelt smile, oh James...
• Women Are Wiser: Played With. He of all people, invokes this when he informs Mr. Stamper, "Never argue with a woman; they're always right" after Wai Lin tosses the detonation fuses to him and insists that Bond complete their mission at the expense of her life. GoldenEye had already established that Brosnan's 007 carries a deep psychological need to Always Save the Girl, so by respecting Wai Lin's wishes, he's also respecting her as a fellow soldier. Relatively speaking, he's more willing to recognize a woman's intelligence than his predecessors, and part of this stems from his greater awareness that he's a Manchild.
• Would Hit a Girl: The flip-side of being portrayed as a more female-friendly 007 is that he can be just as ruthless to a villainess as he is to a villain, so he's more gender-blind as an assassin. He has the dubious distinction of being the only Bond to execute two evil women (Xenia and Elektra), and there would've been a third if Miranda hadn't jammed his gun.

Daniel Craig

Commander James Bond CMG RN

"In my humble opinion, the world doesn't change very much."

Played by: Daniel Craig ^{Other Languages}Latin American Spanish: Carlos Segundo | European Spanish: Jordi Boixaderas | Brazilian Portuguese: Ronaldo Júlio (Casino Royale), Garcia Júnior (Since Quantum of Solace) | Czech: Jiří Dvořák | European French: Éric Herson-Macarel | Japanese: Jurota Kosugi (Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace DVD), Shinshu Fuji (TV Asahi Casino Royale, King Record and BS Japan Quantum of Solace, Japanese Skyfall and Spectre)

Appearances: Casino Royale | Quantum of Solace | Skyfall | Spectre | No Time to Die

Vesper Lynd: It doesn't bother you? Killing all those people?

Bond: Well, I wouldn't be very good at my job if it did.

— Casino Royale

The Vulnerable Bond.

Daniel Craig's interpretation of 007 is often regarded as a successor to Dalton's for his serious and gritty take on the role, which is closer to the character as originally written by Ian Fleming. However, this Bond takes the trope of the Invincible Hero Bond and inverts it. His Bond deals with significant loss, has the most on-screen torture scenes, and goes through several unprecedented twists in his story. Unlike his predecessors, there are very few moments of levity in his films; even compared to Dalton. His casting was initially met with skepticism, but it eventually paid off with the very positive reception of Casino Royale, with special praise to his performance. He is the shortest Bond^note he's 5'10", the other Bonds were all over 6 feet. and the first to be blond. His tenure was the longest in the series in terms of years (fifteen years, from 2006 to 2021)^note Although not in number of films; that record still belongs to Roger Moore.

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• Action Dad: Turns out he fathered a daughter, Mathilde, with Madeleine Swann. After learning this, he uses his skills to protect them both.
• Act of True Love: Elected to be obliterated by a barrage of naval land-attack missiles launched from HMS Dragon along with Safin's Island Base, so he won't risk surviving and letting the nanomachines that the madman infected him kill their programmed targets, those being his wife and little daughter.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: The first Bond to not have dark-coloured hair, but rather blonde. When Craig was cast, some naysayers dubbed him "James Blonde".
• Age-Gap Romance: He's 15 years older than his First Love Vesper Lynd and 17 years older than his Second Love Madeline Swann.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In No Time to Die, he kneels down and begs for Safin's forgiveness to keep his little daughter from being harmed. But this is actually part of his plan: to stall for time and grab a concealed gun. Even then, it shows how a parent would react if a madman threatens their child.
• Agonizing Stomach Wound: Before getting infected with the Heracles which caused him to do a Heroic Sacrifice, Bond was shot several times in the back and stomach by Safin.
• The Alcoholic: Just like the novel counterpart, he drinks a lot. On average, Craig's Bond consumes the most alcohol per movie in comparison to his cinematic predecessors. Spectre has him flat out admitting that he has a drinking problem.
• Alternate Self: Unlike Connery through Brosnan, who were implicitly all playing the same guy, Craig's Bond is a completely different person from a different universe unconnected to them.
• Ambiguously Bi: His first conversation with Silva in Skyfall seems to indicate he swings both ways. Kind of. It's delivered with Bond's signature snarkiness and usage of double entendres. Word of Saint Paul from actor Daniel Craig says that his version of Bond would be willing to "use" men in the same way he uses women.
• Badass Driver: In the tradition of his predecessors, Bond is extremely competent at driving under duress. He has multiple car chase scenes to show.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Most certainly applies to Skyfall, but every film establishes the atmosphere of danger and loss for Bond.
• Baritone of Strength: His voice is very smooth and easy on the ears.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In No Time To Die, an imprisoned Blofeld confesses to Bond that he staged the assassination attempt on Bond and framed Madeleine for it, which caused a strain between Bond and Madeleine's relationship for 5 years. Bond briefly loses control and strangles Blofeld for this, demanding that he die. Needless to say, this actually came true as Bond was unknowingly infected with Heracles nanobots as part of Safin's next move to murder Blofeld, and the latter ends up succumbing to his death seconds later, something which a horrified Bond didn't expect.
• Beard of Sorrow: Grows one in Skyfall after being shot in the opening. He shaves it and cleans himself up when he returns to active duty.
• Blue Blood: Skyfall reveals his family owned a large estate in Scotland, complete with an Old Retainer.
• Bond One-Liner: Lampshaded in Quantum of Solace when M realizes exactly what Bond means when he says someone was a Dead End.
• Brave Scot: Fleming was so impressed by Connery that he canonically established Bond as part-Scottish. Skyfall reveals that the Craig-continuity movie Bond was born in Scotland.
• Broken Ace: This Bond is a ruthless killer who's Married to the Job but is very cynical, frets over losing loved ones, generally questions the morality of his job and has a major drinking problem.
• Broken Bird: Given the amount of hell he's been through his whole life, you can't blame him for not catching a break. Even worse when it's revealed that Blofeld tormented him for his own amusement. And if you think he would finally have some time to heal from his trauma following Blofeld's arrest, you were WRONG.
• Bruiser with a Soft Centre: Despite a rough exterior, Daniel Craig's Bond still has a human side, as expressed with Vesper, Mathis, Camille and Madeleine. And with his and Madeleine's young daughter Mathilde as well.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Gender-Inverted. Daniel Craig's Bond is the only version to have a muscular and curvaceous figure, making it stand out in comparison to other versions of the iconic character, which also helps his physique and charm.
• Byronic Hero: Craig's Bond is a cold-blooded killer with severe emotional issues and a penchant for revenge, who broods over the morality of his job and losing his loved ones.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to Oberhauser's Cain in Spectre.
• Cartwright Curse: Few of the named women he sleeps with survive their whole movie. Madeleine Swann becomes the first in Spectre, since Lucia Sciarra's fate is unknown. No Time To Die sets a precedent for the James Bond series. Madeleine survives. Bond does not.
• The Charmer: He is capable of seduction at will.
• Cool Shades: While several Bonds have occasionally worn sunglasses, Craig's Bond has worn them the most. Notable models include the Tom Ford Marko Aviators from SKYFALL and the Snowdon and Henry models featured in SPECTRE.
• Combat Pragmatist: Notably so. No Bond fights fair, but Craig's employs everything from knives to nail guns to fire extinguishers. Probably reaches its apogee in Quantum of Solace, in which in the space of one 35-second fight, he puts his knife-wielding opponent through two glass doors, pummels him with two different improvised blunt instruments, and finally stabs him to death with a pair of nail scissors. Makes sense as Craig trained extensively in Krav Maga for the role, a fighting style built around winning at all costs.
• Conveniently an Orphan: One of the major reasons he got recruited, according to M.
• Cool Car: Has them in spades and all of them Aston Martins: The DBS V12 (which he barrel-rolled spectacularly in Casino Royale), The DB10 (which, according to Q in Spectre, was supposedly meant for 009; and yet he sunk it in the Tiber River trying to get away from Mr. Hinx), and as always the classic DB5, which he won at a poker game against Alex Dimitrios in Casino Royale then somehow gadgetized with the same secret features as the one in Goldfinger some time before Skyfall. That DB5 ended up destroyed by Silva's goons in Skyfall, only to be rebuilt by Q in time for the ending of Spectre.
• Cowboy Cop: As an MI6 agent, James ignores any orders he doesn't like.
• The Cynic: Generally has a grim outlook on his job as a 00 agent, and loses many allies and friends over the course of his career.
  M: I knew it was too early to promote you.
  Bond: Well, I understand Double 0s have a very short life expectancy... so your mistake will be short-lived.
• Darker and Edgier: Unlike many of his bubblier predecessors, he's a Byronic Hero with a penchant for revenge, much colder and more methodical.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Bond lost his parents at a young age, only to soon be recruited by MI6 as a potential field agent. Vesper speculates that between those two events, he went to Oxford (or a similarly reputed college) where he was bullied by the other students, "hence the chip on your shoulder". Bond doesn't confirm it either way.
• Despair Event Horizon: He comes dangerously close to this in Spectre, when Oberhauser/Blofeld tells Bond that he's taken Madeleine hostage and left her somewhere in the building which is elaborately rigged with explosives and forces him to a Sadistic Choice, but 007 gets better by saving Madeleine in the nick of time.
• Dented Iron: In Skyfall, he has accumulated the injuries anyone would expect from years of espionage (to say nothing of getting shot, falling off a moving train and hitting a river at the beginning of the movie).
• Drink-Based Characterization: In addition to vodka martini and champagne, he drinks a large Mount Gay with soda in the Bahamas, has a beer with Felix in Bolivia, drinks scotch while living off the grid and drinks red wine and liquor with Madeline in Morrocco.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Drinks a lot of Vesper cocktails in Quantum of Solace.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Rather than escape the barrage of missiles from HMS Dragon set to obliterate the villain's island of weaponized nanomachines, which he himself has been infected with a strain *specifically* targeted to kill his daughter, her mother Madeline and their entire-bloodline, Bond calmly climbs to the roof of the lab, radios Madeline one last time to affirm his love for her and their little girl, and with a warm smile lets the rain of missle fire vaporize him *head on* so that his family may live.
• Face Death with Dignity: When it came to living and potentially letting the nanomachines that the villain infected him with murder Madeline and their daughter Mathilde, or letting the barrage of British missiles vaporize him with a confident smile on his face so that his family will be safe, Bond chose the latter fate like a true hero.
• Fatal Flaw: His trust issues, coming after his relationship with Vesper ended. Blofeld's exploitation of them leads to Bond missing most of his child's life.
• Functional Addict: Come Skyfall, he's become addicted to painkillers and alcohol (as if he already didn't have a drinking problem...) It's gotten bad enough that he fails just about every physical exam when he returns for active duty. That being said, it's still not quite bad enough that he can't competently do his job. He struggles here and there, but still gets it done better than anyone else.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Before the beginning of Casino Royale, Bond had no confirmed kills. His first is a contact he gets into a violent brawl with. After that, It Gets Easier. Considerably. However, after his Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Quantum of Solace, he's learned that just because he can kill doesn't mean that it's necessarily the best course of action by the time of Skyfall.
  Q: Every now and then, a trigger has to be pulled.
  Bond: Or not pulled. It's hard to tell which in your pyjamas.
• Genius Bruiser: He is en ex-SBS and has the skills to match, and he is very intelligent, capable of outsmarting both his opponents and his superiors.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Gender inverted. Sometimes he shows shades of this, even more so in Skyfall when he is this while retreating in an island after getting shot.
• Heartbroken Badass: After Vesper dies in Casino Royale.
• The Hero Dies: The first Bond to do so. Bond gets infected with a lethal agent that will make him poisonous to Madeleine and Mathilde. James decides to die on the island rather than escape and risk their lives.
• Hero's Classic Car: A number of vehicles appear throughout Skyfall, but before retreating up to his family's estate, Bond ditches them in favour of a 1965 Aston Martin DB5. In No Time to Die, he drives a 1986 Aston Martin V8.
• Heroic Build: An extremely muscular man, as his numerous shirtless scenes can attest. But, unlike most Hollywood examples, this wasn't on purpose, Daniel Craig himself wanted to plausibly look like he could pull off what an agent like Bond does.
• Heroic BSoD: In Spectre, when Oberhauser/Blofeld tells Bond that he's taken Madeleine hostage and left her somewhere in the building which is elaborately rigged with explosives. Blofeld then gives James two options: either die while risking his life to save Swann, or save himself but leave Swann to die but sink further into depression of not saving her for the rest of his life. Bond takes the first option.
• Hunk: He has the build and the attitude to be counted as one.
• Honey Trap: Seduces Solange Dimitrios to get info on her assassin husband in Casino Royale, and then paper pusher Strawberry Fields to keep MI-6 off his back in Quantum of Solace.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Which make him look even more stoic/cold-blooded, just like the literary version.
• Inexplicably Awesome: A running gag through Casino Royale is Bond knowing things about M that he shouldn't (her address, her name, her computer passwords), and her increasing irritation with it.
  Aide: Well, he's logged into our secure website using your name and password.
  M: Well, how the hell does he know these things?!
• It's Personal: Though he never admits it, he takes his cases far more personally than any of his predecessors.
• Invincible Hero: Inverted, a first for the franchise. Especially coming after Pierce's tenure. Unlike in previous Bonds where Bond saves the day and gets the girl, Craig's Bond's run is much different. While Craig's Bond is still undoubtedly a badass, he doesn't always win and get the girl, and this trope was started right off the bat with Casino Royale.
• Jack of All Stats: He's athletic, but can't match the skills of his quarry and has to use his brain, working the environment, to make up the difference. Also in Spectre, while he is remarkably strong, he comes nowhere near Mr. Hinx.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Personally responsible for killing Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale by shooting out the inflatable supports to the building, causing it to collapse into the canal meaning Vesper drowns.
• Killed Off for Real: No Time To Die ends with him sacrificing his life. He is notably the first and only Bond to actually be canonically killed.
• Knight in Sour Armour: Takes a grim view of his job, as he considers murder his "employment," but refuses to let that shake his incredible loyalty to his country, MI6, and M.
• Ladykiller in Love: He's ready to give up everything he's ever known (including his career at MI6) in order to start a new life with Vesper Lynd, the love of his life, and again with Madeleine Swann.
• Living Legend: In No Time to Die, he meets two CIA agents who are very giddy to meet him, Logan Ash and Paloma though Ash turns out to be a traitor and tries to kill him twice.
• Long-Runners: Has appeared in five films between 2006 and 2021, beating Brosnan, though he had some infamously long invokedsequel gaps that made his tenure the longest in years but not in films.
• Made of Iron: Daniel Craig's Bond gets beaten up more than any other of his kind, jumps from dangerous heights and survives a heart attack but ends up fine & kicking arse the next minute. He even stays alive after being shot multiple times by Safin and despite his wounds, is still strong enough break Safin's arm, shoot him, reopen the missle silos and climb a ladder out of the island.
• Manly Tears: The only Bond to date to shed tears onscreen, in response to the death of M, the closest thing he had to a mother left in this world.
• Married to the Job: In a way, seeing Bond's virtually character-less apartment is kind of sad, showing how little of a life he has outside of MI6. Moneypenny's sarcastic remark about his life when Bond hears her boyfriend over the phone later in Spectre almost sounds like a much harsher jab.
• Men Are Tough: Craig's incarnation of James Bond is a resilient man who has survived several situations that would kill most people.
• More Dakka: Uses a Heckler and Koch UMP-9 in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace and a .500 Nitro Express hunting rifle as well as a HK-416 assault rifle in Skyfall. This reaches its peak in No Time to Die where, among other picked up guns, he uses a Beretta ARX-160 assault rifle with a grenade launcher in the Norwegian forest. Overall he still used automatic weapons less frequently than Brosnan.
• Mr. Fanservice: Probably in the best shape of all the Bonds and is noticeably ogled by the camera much more.
• Nice to the Waiter: In Casino Royale he tips the dealer $500k after winning the tournament.
• One-Man Army: Especially in Spectre, where he single-handedly destroyed the Supervillain Lair of the Big Bad.
• The One That Got Away: After No Time to Die, he becomes this for Madeleine.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Bond, as always, is cool to the core. The Craig portrayal in particular almost never loses his cool. What's one way to get him pissed beyond belief? Blowing up his Aston Martin. Following his first and only real Death Glare in the entire franchise, he will utterly wreck your shit. Then blow it up for good measure.
  • No Time to Die takes this further when Bond confronts Safin, who has taken Mathilde, Bond's daughter, hostage. What does Bond do? Get on his knees and beg for forgiveness. Even if Bond was faking it, it's pretty clear that threats to his daughter's life clearly push Bond to his limits.
• Papa Wolf: He only knew his daughter, Mathilde, for a short time. He was nonetheless willing to move Heaven and Earth to secure her safety.
• Parental Abandonment: In Skyfall, we see the gravestones of his parents, Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix, who passed away in a climbing accident when he was a child.
• Perpetual Frowner: Generally scowls even when smiling.
• Pet the Dog: Despite being Darker and Edgier than his predecessors, he's has his softer moments:
  • Genuinely guiltridden and furious at Agent Fields' death. He tells M to write in her report that Fields showed true bravery and goes out of his way to deliver some karma to Dominic Greene for her.
  • He contacts Felix Lieter to extract Lucia Sciarra, who had become a liability to Spectre once Bond killed her husband.
• Playboy Has a Daughter: Throughout his twenty-five films and counting, James Bond has always been a serial womanizer, never thinking twice about using women if it meant getting the mission done. But in No Time to Die, when he reunites with Madelaine Swann at her childhood home and meets their daughter Mathilde, he takes to her quickly: He cuts her an apple to eat when she's hungry, begs the film's villain Safin to not hurt her when he has her in his clutches, covers her with his coat to keep her warm before sending her and Madelaine away from the island, and right before he confronts the villain for the final time and gets infected with Heracles, he picks up her lost stuffed toy with a smile on his face, clearly anticipating giving it back to her.
• Pragmatic Pansexuality: Daniel Craig noted that Bond would be willing to use men in the same way he uses women. Bond implied that he has been with men before in Skyfall when Silva hits on him.
• Professional Killer: More so than the previous incarnations, there is a greater emphasis during the Craig era that murder is just a normal—even mundane—part of his job. The front cover of GQ's Nov. 2012 issue◊ dubbed his Bond as "The Hitman" for this very reason.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: While he does switch back to the PPK from the P99 in Quantum Of Solace, he often makes use of full sized service pistols, submachineguns, or assault rifles when the situation requires, holding back the PPK when he needs a concealed weapon or he runs out of ammo for other guns. Notably, during the final assault in No Time To Die, he keeps his PPK hidden for an I Surrender, Suckers moment, when he is divested of his assault rifle and main sidearm.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Near the climax of Spectre, he gets an especially harsh one from Oberhauser, considering how he was behind Bond's Trauma Conga Line since Casino Royale.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: His assault on the Perla de las Dunas Hotel to stop Greene in Quantum of Solace is also the occasion for him to take revenge on Carlos, the rotten police chief who killed Mathis.
• Rogue Agent: Briefly goes rogue in Quantum of Solace. Also, since British secret services are controlled by The Mole in the second half of Spectre, it might count too, although more as La Résistance along with M, Q and Moneypenny. He still serves his country's best interest both times.
• Running Gag: If he's supposed to apprehend someone and squeeze them for information, chances are they wind up dead in the chase. It gets to a point where M is seriously annoyed with this and expresses genuine surprise when he doesn't kill a source.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Out of all cinematic Bonds (with perhaps the exception of, fittingly enough, Timothy Dalton), he's the one who's the most prone to not respect protocols and/or go against orders if he feels he has to in order to accomplish his missions or if it goes against his personal code of honour. He does it at least Once per Episode.
• Significant Birth Date: According to his passport in Quantum of Solace, Craig's Bond was born on April 13, 1968, exactly 15 years after the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published.
• The Stoic: This Bond is more emotionally reserved than in other incarnations.
• Tranquil Fury: He slips into a level-headed but seething demeanour when he meets Vesper's traitorous boyfriend Yusef. Although he keeps his tone steady and leaves him for other M16 agents to interrogate, it's clear that he has to fight every fibre of his being telling him to shoot the man on the spot.
• Trauma Conga Line: Where does anyone even begin with this man? Bond goes through one traumatic experience after another, which leave a lasting impact on his life. Casino Royale starts the series off with Bond losing Vesper, and sets the tone for the rest of the series. Spectre reveals that Franz Oberhauser/Ernst Stavro Blofeld was behind many of the tragedies 007 suffered so far since Casino Royale, all because he was envious of the Parental Favouritism his father gave to an orphaned Bond. Oberhauser even tries to weaken Bond's morale by having Madeleine Swann trapped in the old MI6 building that was set to explode, but Bond manages to save Swann in time . . .only for the very next film to find them breaking up after an attempt on their lives leaves him convinced that she's betrayed him, despite her (truthful) protests otherwise. He spends the next five years in isolation and after learning that Madeleine was actually innocent, gets roughly ONE day with her and their daughter before they're abducted and he ultimately has to sacrifice his life to ensure their safety.
• Turn in Your Badge: Subverted. Bond just ignores orders he doesn't like.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • To Judi Dench's M; he follows her orders even after she's dead and can go behind Mallory's back to do so.
  • He self-deprecatingly mocks his own "pathetic love of country" and during his Word Association Test in Skyfall he instantly associates "country" with "England."
• Wardrobe Flaw of Characterization: Whereas previous Bonds were cheeky in their rebelliousness, Craig's iteration obstinately does things his way regardless of the consequences. This is reflected in his dress sense, especially in how he wears lounge suits that are much too tight — from Quantum of Solace through to No Time to Die — and dinner suits without a cummerbund or waistcoat. He'll dress to fit in, but he'll do it in his own way, style guides be damned. Vesper even lays it out in stark terms in Casino Royale (2006), noting that he wears his suit with barely hidden resentment.
• What Have I Become?: According to the DVD commentary in Casino Royale, after he killed Obanno and his bodyguard, he looks himself in the mirror while he changes his shirt, asking to himself these exact words.
• When He Smiles:
  • Near the end of Casino Royale, while dating Vesper, the actual happiness on his face is beautiful to see, considering his usual Perpetual Frowner nature.
  • Does this again at the end of No Time to Die, when he is about to sacrifice himself to the missile explosion, in order to ensure the survival of Madeleine and their daughter Mathilde.

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